Hello World!

I will post a more coherent introduction soon–I promise. BUT, I feel like the best way for me to explain why I’m making this blog is to share this poem, brain dump, journal? That I wrote after the Dobbs majority opinion that was leaked in May 2022, revealing that the court was just months away from something once thought impossible: overturning Roe v. Wade and stripping away the constitutional right to choose, along with protections for reproductive rights. If you follow me on IG you’re probably familiar with my brain dumps–they’re unfiltered and delightfully messy tidbits of whatever thought is ready to be released to the world. They’ve played a huge role in helping me reconnect with myself. The point isn’t to be perfect, neat, or pretty; it’s about being authentic and knowing that the truth is enough. Maybe I’ll dive deeper into that in another post? Anyway, here’s the poem:

What do we do now? Now that the sordid stench of the highest court has come leaking out the back doors.

We’ve been pushed 50 years back in one case.

And I have spent the past nine months in a law school lecture hall learning about some fundamental right that’s five votes away from no longer existing.

And I am Black. In America. I don’t get to pretend that this is unthinkable. Don’t get to pretend that the law is the only way that words change the world.

Don’t get to claim ignorance to this reality of law as a tool—a thing that can be used as easily to curtail justice as it can be used to protect it.

I don’t get to pretend that this degree is anything more than a contract:

A meeting of the minds:

         Legitimacy swapping hands 

They give me a piece of paper that convinces the man at the door to begrudgingly open the door to another ivory tower where I am not wanted—

         where I have to swim against the current just to stay afloat—

And me?

I give a cosign to the institution that elevates the ones who look down on us from high benches and make sure we’re never again seen or heard in ivory towers like these again

The ones who stop into the very Brown nations they put walls around for a piss and a drink while their constituents freeze to death from their negligence

The ones who only know tireless work

When it means taking away my right to vote

My right to choose

My right to walk into a grocery store and not fear being shot

Legitimacy, their most precious, finite resource, is scarce and it is constantly trading hands.

And for what?

A legal system where the accused are given more deference over women’s bodily autonomy than women themselves?

Where they get to decide for women what their bodies hold and open to. Again.

No. I don’t think I need that.

That stamp to go where I feel called

I think the truth in my words is all the legitimacy I need.

To the Sonias

The Ketanjis

I salute you, I have so much respect for your path and your purpose, and your own belief. So much that I almost forced it into me.

But that is yours and not mine.

And every bone in my body is tired of begging for my belonging in places where it simply does not exist.

I am sore from bending over backwards to break bread over the table that is my back.

And if I can do all this while bending over backwards– imagine what I can do standing upright.

What worlds can I dream of when I am not waiting for the permission of people who have not yet even accepted that I have a mind for thinking, let alone dreaming?

So, I stop begging for a seat at the table. And I make my own.