Heart Berries

I felt breathless, like every question was a step up a stairway.

Nothing is too ugly for this world, I think. It’s just that people pretend not to see.

In white culture, forgiveness is synonymous with letting go. In my culture, I believe we carry pain until we can reconcile with it through ceremony. Pain is not framed like a problem with a solution. I don’t even know that white people see transcendence the way we do. I’m not sure that their dichotomies apply to me.

When you told me that I want too much, I considered how much you take.

I think self-esteem is a white invention to further separate one person from another. It asks people to assess their values and implies people have worth. It seems like identity capitalism.

You said you would be on the other a side of the door. That’s how perfect love is at first. Solutions are simple and problems are laid out simply.

You think weakness is a problem. I want to be torn apart by everything.

Observation is a skill. Observation isn’t easy, and the right eyes can make me feel like a deer, while the wrong ones make me feel like a monster.

I woke up as the bones of my ancestors locked in government storage.

My therapists didn’t pity me, not the good ones; they made me strip myself of pandering, manipulation, presentation—they wanted the truth more desperately than I did, and then they wanted me to speak it—live it every moment. I feel like writing is that way. Writing can be hard therapy.

I learned that any power asks you to dedicate your life to its expansion.

I couldn't distinguish the symptoms from my heart. It was polarizing to be told there was a diagnosis for the behaviors I felt justified in having.

I can hear my aunt's voice, telling me that if my security depends on a man's words or action, I've lost sight of my power.

I wanted to know what I looked like to you. A sin committed and a prayer answered, you said.

I think it’s dangerous to let go of a transgression when the transgressor is not contrite.

I can't believe my reserve of water—from my nose and eyes. I have dormant fluid in my body, every woman does. I don't know if I am a cavern or a river. Once, you said I was a geyser: a hole in the ground—bursting.

I washed my face again and again and considered that, if you knew more about my pain, I might feel less of it.

To ascend there must be a dark, a descent.

In my culture, I believe we carry pain until we can reconcile with it through ceremony. Pain is not framed like a problem with a solution.

You are such a home to me.

My people cultivated pain. In a way that god cultivated his garden with the foresight that he could not contain or protect the life within it. Humanity was born out of pain.

I realized that love can be mediocre and a safe comfort, or it can be unhinged and hurtful. Either seemed like a good life.

I'm a river widened by misery, and the potency of my language is more than human.

Sometimes I know part of me is still a ghost, walking next to my mother, looking for something to make an offering to, holding her hand. Either this feeling means that part of me is dead, or that she's alive, somewhere inside of me.

I wanted as much of the world as I could take, and I didn't have the conscience to be ashamed.

The way being healed is never real unless every moment of every day you remind yourself of your progress and remind yourself not to go back, or hurt someone, or do the wrong thing - it's not healing unless you keep moving - you're never done.

I was not right to want to die. I didn't want to leave my family. I liked my mind and its potential. I knew the type of burden I was. I was like my mother.

People have a right to think things will change. I allowed myself that much.

Today, in front of a slew of white authors, during a fellowship, with a drink in my hand, I said that I was untouchable. There was a gasp, and maybe it was a hundred years of work for my name to arrive here, where I can name my pain so well that people are afraid of the consequences and the power.