What We've Become

Black survival requires intentional practices of intimacy. Against a backdrop of oppression mundane practices of it become radical acts of resistance. Causally read, this collection is about romantic love; more broadly it examines how we courageously decide our days.

Defined as mutual trust, care, and acceptance intimacy expects the person practicing it to be vulnerable and vulnerability is inherently unsafe for oppressed people which challenges our primal survival instinct toward mutuality. This is the paradox that motivates these poems where subjects decide to endure in-or evade-intimacy. The choices determine not just who we do or don't spend our lives with but the courage with which we spend them.