Woman,

You spend years wrapping me up

in your selves

Wind me tight

Blueing breasts and juiced out abdomen..

"Yuh know muh lub home but sometime...

I mouth at her glittering neck, her skin hot and wet like a melting sun. Slowly, I find her parted lips and we stumble into another kiss. My heart stutters from the fullness of it.

There is a misconception that the love of a man is hard, reminiscent of a stone statue. They are harden, unmoving, craggy and as such brittle.

I’m tired of sitting. Now, I am standing up.

don’t you dare break her gaze

don’t your dare break the chain

the stories must live on

it has come to my attention that we don't exist 

we the colourful the fluid the bold the open the rule benders…

Even after all these years

I still scared to say these words in public,

still caustous

to let Gay spilt my teeth open

being straight was like living in a closet

I didn’t know was a closet 

some wealthy person’s closet

with enough room and variety

to convince me I wasn’t trapped 

My doormmates whispered about “the lesbian book”. When I told my church youth group my mother had transferred me to an all girls boarding school the elder boys regaled everyone with tales about the lesbians there who used bottles as substitute dildos.

Since I last saw you I’ve been thinking. Thinking about you. Thinking about us, about home, about those kids whose journey mirrors yours and mine, A journey walking with fear. 

She wanted the baby to be okay. Slowly the vision started and she knew, she knew the way that mothers’ know. She knew that this was her child, even though the person in her vision was not a baby, not even a small child, she knew that this was her baby and yes her child was beautiful.

Black child's mother says her ears gave it away

The hint of shame on an otherwise perfect face

Good Hair speaks to the upliftment and love for all women of colour. The influence of colourism and hair type bias has been an ugly remnant of a social conditioning adopted from slavery that is still very much alive and well today. 

Sally: You bring me here to ask foolish questions like that? You think anybody take time to tell enslaved people when and where they born? Many of us didn’t even know who bring us into this world, but not my children. I made sure that they grew up with me and that they knew their father.

The Caribbean has a long history of multiculturalism due to the migration that occurred voluntarily and by force. This history includes the division of Afro Caribbean and Indo Caribbean people, predominantly in Guyana, Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago. The same system that was held in the United States, separating house slaves from field slaves based on their shade of brown was also implemented in the Caribbean between the Indians and the Africans.

J’ai été conditionné à être un objet.

Il fallait à tout prix appartenir à quelqu’un. Mon

quotidien consistait à faire le beau, en espérant qu’on

me remarque et qu’on me choisisse.

you make me a foreigner in my own country

where disbelieving citizens welcome me with open arms

because they think I bring tourism dollars.

you rear your sinister head every time i return

and make me wonder if this is why i left.

Your thoughts and words are of no consequence to me.

I am free.

Inna mi dream -

a blue dream,

where we

trod through tanks of indigo

years upon years

with paddles,

hands wrinkled

bodies being burnt,

like your tar babies,

I can also vividly remember being told by somebody I loved that I was beautiful for a black girl. I can honestly say that I did not fully understand the implications of this comment. I now understand.

The worst part of it all, is that there are deep roots of trauma still plaguing our families yet the outsiders only care about the resorts, the plantain, or the reggae that is overplayed on certain radio stations.

Here she was, head laid, in the lap of the boy who was her rising sun, the peas to her rice. A tender moment spoiled by a bigoted anecdote.

Everything was completely white. I was the only object of colour but for once that excited me. I shut the door behind me and began to look around. There really wasn’t much to see, two white leather couches, white Persian rug, white statue of some naked man. It was boring, but new all the same.

Radical love in the time of Corona is making space for arms akimbo and mouth agape, for knee(s) bent and heartache, as we vacillate between dread, prayer, and protest, as we let go of how things were and how they should be.

The black woman has been shackled with the baggage of centuries of racial discrimination, religious and social control, censorship, as well as sexual repression.

This piece depicts a woman of African descent gazing directly at the viewer as tropical flowers, frozen in motion, waft past her face.

We've fought then, we fight now.

Who kyah hear, muss burn. And I'm

tired of that being us,

You hold dark secrets despite your mild fame.

Filled with shame, you cringe when you hear your name.

You were born of light, however.

I stand before you with great adoration for making it this far.

I know you think you have not made a drop in the ocean

but to the greater world you have

They are too upset to say it to you though

Because how can one gyal have so much power?

We learn to love the devils that hold the whip against us,

We mistake them as gods, accepting the laws they pass…

Waking up today felt like any other day until I realised that I could not leave the house anymore. Wait, no, that is untrue. I could leave, but only for the essentials they say.

Once a year you give me permission the fly above your judgement so you may enjoy me

…. You think.

My body is also a topic of conversation when I walk into a room. Family members and friends all feel the need to tell jokes about my body.

She would not allow the creeping doubts from the previous months to dampen her spirit. Not while she had the rum in her system. She bobbed and weaved to make her feathers dance some more and so the stage lights could pick up the glitter on her skin

Soca takes over my body. Dressed in black and white, teenagers and young adults from all around the island are there to celebrate the death of King Vaval. Doing the helicopter with a small towel, singing and dancing behind the music truck, my cousin and I enjoy these last free-spirited moments.

I never really took part in Mash again, either as a participant or bystander, until University. You see, despite what the Wikipedia article on Mash says, the celebration was a very racially divided one. Sure, many ethnicities lined the parade route, although conservative families didn’t do even this, but the persons in the parade were largely Guyanese of African heritage

It have people who, when they play mas does get tired, does need to pee, does complain they foot burning them. Not her. And though she was the kind of can’t mash ants girl who never let no man pass his place with her – the very cliché of a stoosh bank employee, Carnival was different.

Intersect believes that wellness, both physical and mental, are important practices we all can do to resist the pressures of society. One of the most radical activities you can do is to practice self-love and care.

This house, is not a home.

Its given me more dark days, than light ones

More punishments, than rewards,

More anxiety, than happiness.

y cuando digo muerta por dentro

realmente digo entrañas en carne viva

digo culto al dolor silencioso…

All I know is love

I grew up, drinking it by the gallons.

In this time of a pandemic and loads of panic…

Yuh wake up screaming, parched lips bitter from the tail-end of another nightmare…

I am comfortable in my own skin…

In order for any woman to grow she must shed every mindset that doesn’t fertilise her purpose…

This piece is full of pathos, evoking pity and sadness…

For so long physical and verbal abuse I endured…

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably known for a long long time that your mental landscape is very different…

There are pockets in my mind

that empty themselves

hold coins of memory?

“She stands before the door. Feeling the tremor. Goes forward to the lock with fingertips trembling. Searching. Naked. Vulnerable in this corridor of wall, greyed like the lips of a waterfall.”

I wonder if you would still love her

If she had no body

No female physical attributes for you men to gaze at

No Instagram picture to hit the love button

The names listed here are just a mere fragment of the lists upon lists of diasporic Indo-Caribbean women who have been injured, harmed, and murdered at the hands of heteropatriarchal power – whether that be in the form of their parents, community members, or even intimate partners.

As Shea sat in the pew listening to Father Lewis preach about forgiveness, her mind wandered back to the trial. Fr. Lewis was getting into the throes of the sermon and showed no signs of letting up any time soon. She allowed her thoughts to drift.

Taitu Kai Goodwin. Taitu. Daughter of the Soil. Antigua Girls’ High School Alumna. Former Ambassador’s daughter. Miss Anguilla. Someone I knew. Taitu.

Tantie Mary say that since me feel me a big woman now, to gwan and don’t comeback. The words still ring in my head three weeks later. My last image of Hibiscus Road featured the woman who raised me.

It was three months after moving into their new home that Toni-Ann was recognising a new pattern with George. He seemed secretive, withdrawn at times and agitated with her most days.

Maybe this is the time to come clean. This is the salvation, the sign she had been beseeching the universe for the last four years. Or maybe this is a trap. To admit the abuse, would be to admit her weakness. 

Control is not love. Obsession is not love. Harassing a person to respond in a certain time frame is not love. That’s entitlement.

Being in love is a sensation like no other. The feeling of being validated...I got the guy! He told me that the way our feelings developed for each other were so unique and effortless. He never wants to lose it

One of the participants was an American woman of Haitian descent who expressed her trouble dealing with depression due to the struggle of sharing mental and emotional concerns with her mother.

Because to me, it means nothing; it’s just a number

It gives me no validation nor brings me shame

My grandmother seasoned Saturday soups with songs,

but never the ones from the land she left behind.

She anointed my scalp with oil,

plaited my hair with prayers,

spooned love with the chocho into my mouth.

My gratitude for your kindness was never expressed

For I was too young to be grateful

Too young to care, understand, or appreciate

You blessed three little girls of color

And valued their mother, a loyal worker for years

madre estas raíces no se pegan a nada 

madre tu angustia no se quita con nada 

I spoke loud with my red dress on,

The one that had the split on the sides.

Yeah, that one.

Basic freedom was denied

And daily I cried.

Labeled as the “weaker sex”

Taunted mercilessly. My soul grew vex.

Wretched. Worthless

An imbecile. Senseless.

I look up with my head high

Shoulders back

And a smile on my lips

Unafraid

Unashamed

Free

Everyone has to thrive in order for the system itself to thrive, every display of hate is only an unexpressed need to feel valid.

Through all layers and fits it slithered

Though still I scrambled to look decent

Heavy is the weight of my femininity,

But a weight I will bare until a change has come

I’m tired of writing about this

I’m tired of writing this

I’m tired of being handed material

everything destroyed in reverence of a new god, an unfamiliar god, they called him money. this god had power unlike any my people knew before, and to how my grandfather told it - it demanded servitude, offerings, and sacrifice like no other. It was an angry god.