I write about radical, self-being — paying homage to my life and my friends and my family and my people — in the same lineage of Black women writers who generously shared the entirety of their own lives — all intimate, ugly, beautiful, and vulnerable — Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Donika Kelly, Lucille Clifton, Morgan Parker. Using both writing and photography (camera), my work deals with the messy centers of being alive and trying to explain how the grace and warmth of love + joy (Mom’s brown hands kneading dough against the counter, hiking the Catskills with N.) — are saving me (us) from the horrors which lie hidden in the everyday/mundane. I am trying to bestow the proper praises for the body, life, and those I love but I still must grapple with the fact that life also includes carrying pepper-spray, avoiding alleyways, covering my drinks, code-switching, checking if there’s another person of color in the room. I’m trying to make space for everything to exist and I’m asking: how can we live with the presence of everything – love and violence being inextricable from our everyday.