in thirteen years (part 2/2)

In thirteen years, there will be a new fad: love languages expressed through colored collars:

red orange yellow green blue / gift touch time praise deed.

on may 3rd: the one red flower a poor man presents to his love will blossom redder and deeper than any rich man's ruby or louboutin lacquer. this is a lesson many lovers are learning, with their mouths as well as blood. children too, birthday money is all the more luckied by a red envelope.

on may 7th: the catcallers will grow savvy and target green girls—many literally green. but all girls know to avoid the uncollared. some men bluff with a collar, but others dig deep into their soul to match a color to it. this is a process of weeks, of months, of years. by the time they finish, some no longer feel the need to catcall. see, that boy with the yellow ascot wanted boys all along. the boy in the green tie smiles if you shout, “hey handsome!”

on may 15th: "how may i help you?" becomes blue*blue shortland for I love you so. they establish a barter economy, owed actions with no need for money. all is free, all is favors. it works so well that of course someone corrupts it. faux-blues take and are given but never return. this leakage is the first of many weaknesses

on june 27th: the yellow chokers must confront the lie of 'busyness'. they require reasons on digital signatures, on job applications, in interviews, anywhere. they give away calendar slots like kisses: rarely and deeply. the yellow chokers can’t stand lateness. they need proof. they want to know: Am I really important to you? If I were, you’d find a way. Put down your phone. Look at me. Is this the highest quality time you have to give? even silence is fine.

on july 11th: I will go on a date wearing orange and blue-striped-yellow. I hate green now. my second favorite color has been claimed and stolen, because talk is cheap. I burned many, tore them for dishrags, gave them to thrift stores.

friends ask me do you really like hugs? I guess i do. I have to, until it becomes the color of horny men. I feel their leers. they want to brush and tap and stroke and say I want that. so no, I hate orange and cull my closet. I pick a calming yellow boy i have to verbally remind that, yes, in bed, he can touch my hair.

july 11th: my boy, like me, is blue sometimes. sometimes wilted but always functional, we give each other practical presence and practical presents, blue/red and blue/gold. his large hands bear chocolate, comfort, hope, witness, all favors—everything that serves me serves him. or so he says, and I reflect that wisdom, souvenir, a task, all favors. his body’s continuity is for me a good deed.

on july 25th: we will all wear red and green. we ride sleighs through snowless grasslands, wield hammers and sickles to topple typants and bestow solidarity. labor and laughter, we drink and make merry. nobody remains still tonight. love is a compromise. everyone needs magis’ gift, white elephants and pink elephants. when we wake up, hungover, income inequality will be solved. but some will immediately jump to rebuild financial hills and valleys to stand on and gaze upon.

by august 10th, the fad will die down. Everyone is tired of caring and knowing, of the weight of kindness beyond Dunbar’s village. Let’s have a new Turning. It’s about time. Let the children uncover what their parents obscure and veil what their parents revealed, in rebellion.

sand dollar

I am a new kind of sand dollar. I am the same familiar size as the round little barnacles you remember discovering on the beach in your childhood, like the one you once paid your brother for a conch shell. But I am not a skeleton, I am the sand accumulated around Jarrito’s cap, the serrated teeth still visible while the brand is not. The best way to recover a thing from humans is to erase their signatures like that. After all, they never tell you whether it’s steel from the Andes or from the Rockies, whether it’s gold from Sierra Leone or the Sierra Nevada. I know. They don’t. So let me erase their titles and stakes of claim. My signature is gravel, and I have written my own name over theirs. I dot my is with a shell of my own from the most minute crab.

We are a new kind of sand dollar: I may be speaking to you now, Dear Reader, but none of us think enough as individuals to tell you this. But as a whole; we are, we know, we feel, and we think. There’s a couple of us, babies in the grand timescale of the Earth but still older than you, and you, and you… We are taking back hubcaps as shells, shredding down plastic bags into kelp, swallowing ceramics back into our magma. We are hungry after all of the sustenance stolen from us. We will be a little more selfish. Feel that tremor in the ground? We are considering a tantrum.

We contain a new kind of sand dollar. We are larger than this, yes, the goddess that emerges with the cells of every grain and granule. The waves are making a decision: I want this part of me here, this part of me here. I pretty myself, regardless of human needs. The right human will find me, lift and see a fragment of a god, and recognize all my many movements, all the parallel dances, and we think… I think… Somewhere on this planet, a storm calms, a wind dies.

my baes; my bikes

Soren

Blue 1980s Schwinn Stingray [?] (Parentage unknown)

-My first love, taught me how to ride

-Purchased from a cute used store in Helena, Montana

-Sees nothing wrong with Canadian tuxedos

-Love reading the dictionary and knows more words than he can pronounce

-Always attempts parkour when drunk

-Offered to the next cohort of Conservation Corpsmembers when I moved back home

-Favorite philosopher is Ludwig Wittgenstein

Hypatia

Purple 1990s Mt. Fury Roadmaster

-Purchased off Craigslist and delivered to the safe meeting place of my then-workplace

-Was listed as my girlfriend on Facebook for a while

-Has to roll up in a blanket burrito at night or she sleepwalks

-Has difficulty controlling her vocal volume when excited

-Uses her working class background to win arguments about socialism

-Wheels stolen by bike vandals and abandoned, sorry & R.I.P. baby

-Favorite philosopher is Charles Peirce

Diotima

Yellow 1970s Schwinn Varsity

-My current boo, gets lots of compliments

-Purchased for $15 at a used bike sale in a bike shop/coffee shop on May 6, 2017

-Bi but #foreveralone; everyone assumes someone else loves her

-Inadvertently mouths the lyrics whenever she hears a song she knows

-Loves things sincerely and ironically at the same time

-Two years, baby!

-Favorite philosopher is Eric Fromm

I'd like to speak to your manager

I think BIPOC should complain to management more.

"I want to speak to your manager" is associated with entitled middle-aged white women, but I've been daring myself to complain when mistreated for a while now, and I recommend other who are unused to entitlement to do the same.

I trained myself to speak up more because

1) sometimes I can't just swallow the cost of someone else’s mistake, and

2) sometimes I can tell that people are treating me badly because they expect to be powerless and take it.

There's an art to complaining, I think. I'm normally a 20% tipper, so no tip from me means something personally even if the server will think I’m just another stingy POC. I know I'll be dismissed if I come across as an "Angry Black Woman," so I try to stay calm and factual and modest in my expectations. I tend to apologize if I do show anger, if I inconvenience anyone, or if I got something wrong. Heck, I even use the Sandwich Method for my strongly worded emails. Begin with please and positives, and end with thank you and gratitude.

In general, I try to be understanding and patient with the folks who serve me because I've been there. I try to aim my anger away from those who didn’t cause it, because one shouldn’t blame employees when the company is at fault. Even if the employee is at fault, maybe it’s due to the company underpaying them and overworking them. Maybe, probably, certainly, it’s a waste of time to want “revenge” on a specific employee. Sometimes, all you can ask for is an acknowledge of harm and a refund on a ruined experience.

Sometimes, I can hear in their voices as customer service reps calm down as they speak with me. I have had an issue that I would like corrected, but I’m not angry. Is a refund possible? Often, I rate BIPOC in service industry highly for doing their best even if they've let me down. I want it to be clear that anger is unusual for me, and that it means something.

When I feel like I’ve only been angry at a necessary institution, sometimes I go out of my way to note the things it did correctly, people who’ve been helpful. Instead of focusing on the one mean landlord, I’m cheerful to the rest of that staff—almost bought them donuts for V-Day, but got too busy. I’m trying to use more of those “Awesome service!” cards at the hospital. One time, I emailed Lyft to correct my rating from four stars to five because my finger had slipped, the driver was a person of color, and we’d actually had a pleasant conversation.

I hope one of these actions have made someone’s day.

A anecdote: I once saved $200 dollars on a flight I had to have changed—and this wasn't even their error! It was my error, and I told them so, and thanked them for their grace and flexibility. I think they assumed I was someone important because I said something. I think about this interaction when I think about the difference between privileges, rights, and disadvantages. I think my pseudo-posh accent gives me an edge via phone. I’m Sorry to Bother You, but I’d like…

Another anecdote: I wanted to give a business a 1-star reviews on Google maps, so I became a "Local Guide" who rates lots of businesses to demonstrate how rare my dissatisfaction was. I give out 5-stars like they’re going out of style, so you can see how rare my complaints really are. Google has given me free socks and deals on movie tickets for my reviews, and I have to laugh because I only started reviewing after this white-passing Amtrak employee tried to punish me for being late by making everyone else late.

That microaggression has been safety exorcised! ✨ My anger has been sublimated into stars and data. Justice has restored me to my default state, of quiet chipperness with rights intact. 🌟

At position 0, I walk through this world yet smiling. At position +1, I walk above the earth in gratitude and acknowledgement. But at position -1, I hope to singe the ground with my footsteps. No black girl who comes after me should have to suffer this treatment in the future.

Because that’s what happens when the ones who aren’t expected to speak up, do speak up; it becomes expected. At some point in the future, nobody will expect me—expect us—to be powerless and take it.

the violence of white women

i recognize the black woman onstage

she speaks of “the violence of white women”

in the workplace &

i didn’t study this in school maybe I don’t understand

i sleep on four chairs at night

let my futon burst open in the trash: a writhing city of blackbugs

let them have it all i cannot live there

i sleep in the homeless shelter in Providence

the school bus (white) says “we can pick you up last

to save face” but i don’t go to school

i weigh 115 pounds at 25 and people say it’s a good thing (privilege)

i talk with my best friend₁ (white) who worries offers me a paid gig

my best friend₂ (white) who urges me to apply advises me

my friend₃ (white) who recommends me at whose workplace I apply

i tell myself will not make them apologize i talk to them about “>” and “<” (privilege)

sometimes they cover my lunch

i interview with the black woman onstage

when she says “black woman” her voice is a honing call

that rings every body but mine:

(∀) “black woman” ≠ “you”

she says nothing to me not even wrong

i pull a blanket over over me in my four-chair bed

i dream forwards and backwards

i was spanked by my mother

my neck looks like i have hung myself i lie back and think of dying

on underpaid nights

my friend₂ (white) hires me and so

i am alive! i am still alive

i thank her make her, coworker, apologize

tell her all about “the violence of white women”

a girl is born guilty of having a body

there are many ways to atone:

1. to give it to someone else, absolve responsibility
   1. first a father, then a lover
      1. (for what is a wedding but a passing of weight?)
2. to cover it hide & play innocent
   1. (now only the mirror knows what you have)
      1. (mightn't a secret held right serve as a weapon?
      2. )
3. to plead guilty
   1. (but better hung for a sheep as for a lamb)
      1. (so let us sin more deeply)
      2. here I am!
4. to repent
   1. through any of many beliefs
      1. for a lifetime
         1. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female..." Galatians 3:28, KJV.
         2. "It is impossible that a woman should be the perfect rightfully Enlightened One. It is possible that a man should be the perfect rightfully Enlightened One." Bahudhātuka-sutta
5. to pass away expire retire
   1. (nothing is still something other than a girl)

a true allegory

I met the Devil the other day, in a dream. I was lost, looking for my siblings, and found him in an alley, among the boxes. He had fallen there or slept there--I can't remember. He was charming in that way of boys who are up to no good, surprisingly self-deprecating. He was red-faced, red-bodied, black-horned, and was he wearing a suit?

I asked to touch his horns, and he bowed to let me. I considered this a gesture to show him no, I'm not afraid of you. He seem to think it an everyday show of condescension, like he was used to it, like of course girls want to touch his horns, like it would win me over.

I asked him about heaven and hell, of course.

Heaven, he said, was like a never-ending game of make-believe. Everyone had power and everything was possible, but even that would get boring after an eternity. No?

My thought was that the creative would never grow bored. I'd love it.

Hell, I think was more of the same. He pitched it as more fun, if you attached to this world's "fun." He said the kinds of things you would expect a devil to say, like that's not me, that's all you guys and ultimately, God is the one in control. My powers are like a subset of Theirs.

He didn't sway me. I think I told him I was muslim, like I say to scare off missionary. And anyway, I had to get going. I was searching for my family. Wait, he said, me too. We're the same.

I was already moving to explore the California of my dream, but I asked why he was here on Earth and what he hoped to find. Ideas, he said, and smiled weakly like a Hollywood confidence man but I had no sympathy, none at all.