i am in new mexico this weekend for a poetry reading with some friends. just a little while earlier, i stopped to look at a painting from a street artist, who turned out to be a retired teacher. he told me built a schoolhouse on the Hopi reservation in Arizona, and then recounted more of his life story before he arrived in Albuquerque. it was a beautiful interaction, and reminded me how my energy attracts such moments.

for the past six months, i haven’t been able to access my light or my warmth. i can’t say that i feel numb, but mostly just grief. a lot happened since July of 2025. a lot in my life has changed. it doesn’t feel appropriate to put all of that here. my thoughts have been mostly consumed by getting through each day. lately, i feel slightly more present. g & i came to ABQ before years ago, on one of our first trips together. we went through a lot together, and i miss our conversations. i have a lot of thoughts obviously. none i would say here. just that i think of my beloveds often. mostly i just want the people whom i hold dearest in my life to be held, to be cherished, to be safe, and to be loved. life is difficult, and while i know i am 1 of 1 and irreplaceable, so are the ones i have loved. that will always be true.

Somehow I have survived all the dreams from the past few months. I saw a post calling San Juan a Pisces. I’ve never been to the island. My friend told me to rid myself of this constant coil of energy I should go swim in the waters. Offer my grief to the currents. I wrote the date of a repast in a book that should be a gift I won’t send. I will go then. The thing is, I was never really young. Just mercurial and reckless and perhaps an undiagnosed neurodivergent. I wonder if I will ever experience a love story like Moonstruck. Nevermind I did and it did not end the way I thought it would. I haven’t made it to the opera yet. Everyone tells me to stay away from Gemini. Everyone says stop falling in love with a Leo moon. It’s a Sagittarius full moon. I read that you can have sex with a spirit — but it might appear as food. An ex lover twice has tried to tempt me into eating food with her. I declined. I only share meals in the physical realm. Repair in this lifetime. I won’t make promises in the dream one. I can’t keep it together. Like Leila Chatti said, sorrow has been good for my poems. Only in my case, it is the break ups. Usually I only cry once — at the headstones of my ancestors. This time, I’ve cried often these ugly tears. I would rather weep than yell. Energy is so precious. We don’t have to repeat generational patterns. The divine is always gentle but absolutely firm. Yes. I ask for a sign. More times than not, I spot a gold and black flecked snake. A few weeks ago a coyote crossed into our backyard. There was a prairie dog watching me from the roadside. A few deer have appeared out of the mesquite brush. It’s very difficult to forgot someone whose Venus haunts my 8th house. Just as hard I am sure, to ignore the emotional moon that tries to hide in my 12th house. Synastry, and old letters, tell me I am not delusional. The erotic and whimsical can coexist. Ferocity cannot live without tenderness. Please accept this offering of affection. Trust the intimate. Embrace the solar return. The sun always rises.

today i am reading Joan Copjec’s Read My Desire. i am supposed to be asking questions as i read. so what is at stake here? it is i, it is me, it is the subject i am the point of discussion, the narrator and this is a portrait of an alchemist.. and am i trying to discover what is being concealed from me? what is invisible? there is an absence – not a void – but an unoccupied object of desire… Lacan says the gaze does not recognize you but what if desire also does not see you? i am on my own. my desire cannot be validated.

the text was not feeding me enough. i found another substack instead. this one had a header that read “If Your Desire Has Gone Quiet, Start with What You Eat.”

i started thinking about spiritual starvation. what happens to the body if we do not nourish our bodies with love? what happens if we do not offer ourselves the roots of our desires? the hunger is not necessarily food we consume through our mouths. it changes form. The substack from Joshua Kaye says, “You rush pleasure. You forget what actually tastes good…. You say you are fine because the real answer would take too long. The body keeps carrying the truth, even when the mouth has learned how to sound reasonable.” I let out a long breath.

For the past six months I have managed to stick to my routines, to follow through on the schedule that keeps me running on a physical plane. I am Saturnian. I know discipline and maintenance allow me to survive. But that isn’t balance. I misplaced my true desire, my true hunger. My dreams are full of desire. Only this last week have I been able to read again and find myself filling up with thoughts and ideas.

Joshua Kaye continues, “The body may need a meal before it can believe in a future.”

So what meal do we feed our body?

Last week I asked the ancestors in my space and on my altar to give me guidance, to protect me. That night I dreamed of cowrie shells being placed at my doorstep. My immediate ancestors (like the last 150 years) are desert folks. But a reader told me some years ago that my origins were near oceans. You have a shadow that walks with you, she said. I know where the cowrie shells came from, from an island. Not of my people. Of others. Of another who is also not eating.

“Care struggles to land in a system built only for survival.”

How do we feed ourselves enough to erase our lack of pleasure? How do we find sustenance that actually nourishes us? We experience distance as a loss so much so that the loss becomes the priority we preserve. I am suspended by the denial of my existence and I am only aware of the pangs of grief. I saw a hummingbird flying near our bushes this morning. My ancestors do not want me to believe that my presence has been buried. The little green bird reminded me that the body remembers what the mind starves.

So if you are feeling hungry these days, perhaps it is time to review the quality of food that you are eating. Perhaps it is not meant for consumption.

Two years ago today I was working at a small Starbucks in a small town that calls itself the Beef Capital of the World. It was the only job I could get after a 3 year search. In March of 2020, COVID crept onto the campus of UT Austin, just across the street from where I worked in a specialty coffee shop. I had mostly loved that job every day of the almost 8 years I had worked there. I used to joke that I spent 85% of my life there during that period. It was hardly a lie. Even when I wasn’t working, I would go there to write or to hang out with my coworkers/friends. Two of the relationships that shaped and defined my 12 years in Austin happened in that old two story building. B used to come by to drink espresso, even when we were not speaking. The Saint came and studied in a desk near the door. We would stare at each other almost the entire time. I met some of the most important people in my life in that place. Poets, scholars, intellectuals, historians, musicians. So many folks who gave me a book to read or told me to check out a specific writer — all while I made espressos and cappuccinos. I knew so many different orders from regulars, and of course, I had regulars who knew so much about me; some who would stay with me until I closed the shop after 10. That time was so difficult in so many other ways, but in others, my life was exactly a perfect mix of romance and tribulations. It prepared me for everything that came after March of 2020. Our staff was put on furlough, and I opted to move back to the place I grew up. So much felt uncertain, and after having been away from my family for almost 20 years, decided it was time to go back.

We will skip some years and return to my first thought. I got a job at Starbucks in 2023, and wasn’t sure what I was building. Being a poet does not pay much money. I never imagined living past 28 so every year after always felt like a blessing. But I soon realized I had to decide that I wanted to live and not just survive. When I finished my MFA in 2006, I knew eventually I would get a PhD. But I took a long time to get back. I applied to some schools in 2013, and was waitlisted for a Latin American Studies PhD. I reapplied in 2020 to creative writing PhDs, and was waitlisted atU of H for a fellowship. They said I could come but I would have to pay. I declined. I gave it one more shot and applied again in the fall of 2023. When I worked at Starbucks, I only worked at the window taking orders or I would be on the cleaning cycles. I never figured the recipes or flow to be making drinks. I was much better talking to people or washing dishes. I was at work when I got an email that I had been accepted into a CW program, but I only had a few days to decide.

I talked to my then partner and one of my friends about it. It was a five year commitment, and I would be in Lubbock for awhile. But the offer was more than the other programs, and I could still be near my family. I accepted it, and started that fall. I didn’t tell anyone I worked with that I would be leaving, not until 3 weeks before I was going to quit. Some of them had become friends, and I felt guilty leaving them. It was a test of endurance to work that job, between dealing with customers and a violent corporation. I felt terrible and I questioned my integrity often. In the past two years of coursework in my PhD, I still feel that I question my integrity and that so many things pry at my ethics. I have met people who are committed to their politics in ways that humble me, and I have also met people who say they are one thing but they do the opposite, or perform so well that perhaps they don’t even know it is a lie. The university is a complex entity that swallows you if you aren’t careful. I am no longer in the coffee shop by campus but inside the institution. I look at all my time of working in service and remember that the day is not the year.

This morning I submitted grades for my class, and I won’t be teaching for a year as I go on fellowship. This means I won’t have to go to campus at all, nor will I be around or running into anyone. Not friends, enemies, professors, or the poet. I hope to massage the muscles that have atrophied during this time, and that I reignite the spirit within myself that has been dimmed.

I work from my parents’ kitchen table and look at the stacks of books I need to read this summer. Today is Sylvia Wynter’s 98th birthday, and I have been thinking a lot about the constructed identity of the Western hu(man). I am not a Caribbean scholar, but so many Caribbean intellectuals and poets have made their way into my reading that I sigh in relief that the things in the classroom I have seen are not true everywhere. That there is space for capaciousness, for play, for love, for devotion, and yes, for opacity if I so choose. And that there are those of us who are the things we say, even if it might cost us, but that the person we are and might become, are also made up of all the moments that came before. And we choose how to move in this world.

the other day my friend and i were discussing how much fun we had together last summer. love made our day to day pain and grief bearable. it was my summer of being a mermaid. my beloveds’ whimsy allowed me to experience lightness. i forgot how sad i was. last summer was hard in so many ways that i can’t articulate. six years this march i met my ex partner. our first conversation lasted almost six hours. we talked into the wee hours of the morning. they always made their intentions clear, and are one of the most honest people i have ever met. i don’t talk much about how that break up except in therapy because its something i want to keep private and to myself. to protect it? i don’t know. and how do you talk about a life you had with someone who is no longer in it?

i learned from my relationship with the saint that keeping my love life private was something important to me. she was the first woman i ever dated who claimed me. she would come to my work and not just want my attention, but return it to me in excess. she took me to class, let me drive her car everywhere while she DJed. i lived at her apartment with her two cats and endured terrible television shows she liked watching. she loved taking photos of us, sitting on my lap, wrapping her arms around me. she used to braid my hair. she introduced me to her friends. i took her to two weddings. and i felt adored. until of course, i didn’t. but i had never had anyone love me so loudly as she did. she was proud to be with the poet. but of course it was a public break up.

so after that, i kept things more quiet. only friends knew. i dated another friend whom i hadn’t seen in several years. we spent late nights on the phone during one of the most difficult moments in my life, talking. we saw each other for a few months, remaining chaste by staying in hookah lounges and putting together puzzles and only kissing in the parking lots of restaurants. things ended badly between us over a man (her best friend) and her family. she sent flowers. we resumed talking. but comphet life intervened. it was a private loss i endured, culminating in a break down after watching Call My By Your Name one night.

for five years and a multiplicity of reasons, g & i kept our relationship to ourselves. friends and family knew and our lives were intertwined. our love was nourishing and healed me in so many ways. and even though it was private, i never felt hidden or pocketed. then last summer happened and now i spend each day without my best friend.

september came and i fell in love with a poet. that ended in december in a brutal discard and for the past four months, i retreated into what has always protected me: solitude. dealing with two very different break ups has taken a toll on me, but recovering from one in which i was pocketed and left for a man (again) has been hard because i do not hide who i am or whom i love. i am writing a book of poems about love. my work is always public. my love is usually private. how do i reconcile this if i am now writing about the thing i have kept to myself?

i spent May Day in a series of long meetings. our university doesn’t want us to talk about our gender identities or our sexual orientation. they don’t want us to exist. but my life is my work. my love is my work. and i exist. the worst thing about being in these meetings was listening to how little others care about us, how disposable we are to them. to love is to be brave. to care is to have courage. to say to someone, i choose to struggle with you is a risk. my friend reminded me that think that way, to live that way, is a kind of freedom most people do not know, experience, or want because there is a level of cost to that. and i pay it each day ever so gladly. because the alternative is to exist in fragments, to follow form and seek validation, to accept an ordinary life, instead of surrendering to what is divine. and i am noticing more and more that the people who remain in my life are those who do not play about me, about their commitments, their loves, their lives, or the lives of others. and i am ever so grateful for these people who claim me in such public ways. whose actions and presence say i love you. you are safe. i don’t need tears or empty promises. liberation requires courage.