am I supposed to be enjoying this?

the wellness is not welling

pic by Jessica Iroh

oh baby, oh baby. You’re supposed to want to be here and alive, hiking trails on the hot weekend in the desperate apathetic west and don your weighted vest and drive back to the city with iced lattes; mix up the collagen into a non-gelatinous substance and get it down your neck, and while you’re in there, do the same thing with 1. protein, 2. healthy fat. 3. colostrum 4. functional mushrooms 5. whatever your body hasn’t been getting. Whatever will get you out of the red zones. oh man, oh man. You’re supposed to be casually on a dating site, but it shouldn’t be like your whole deal or anything. You have an allergy to people trying to box you in, box you up, and serve you to the masses. You keep hearing about brilliant black women that should have made it, i.e not died, but didn’t, i.e. they died, and you think about the similarities in all of us. How so many were desperately alone with a talent, unwatched and unmet; projected upon and consumed, poorly renumerated and left for dead, and you think, you think.

oh child. oh child. Well, you're still the kid you were, just more years on the body. My friend does these romantic rituals with her partner, where they honour the children in them, the babygurls that live in their limbs. I’ve been lugging the child in me around and drowning her in coffee drinks and should-dos. It used to be booze. She was half asleep, overwhelmed by all the drowning. I would go to the pubs and the clubs just to blow the lights out in my head, to be carried away on the fateful seas. If you don’t make room for creativity, it will come for you sideways, as boredom, as envy, as rage, as apathy, as ache.