The notes app is a very intimate space.
These vignettes started there, thoughts caught mid-flight. These are small experiments in writing. Very Carrie Bradshaw of me. I want to see if any land.
I have of course greatly expanded and edited the notes on here, I am not just writing Shakespearean soliloquys on my phone. There’s normal stuff on there too, like shopping lists and reminders and texts I ain’t ever sending. The most recent note says ‘hummus for Malyka’s birthday’ - I don’t know what the fuck I was talking about.
Greedy Strawberry Thief
(This one is a bit horny.)
He came in with the sun on his back and strawberries spilling out from under his arms. Bruised and glinting like stolen rubies. His chest was bare. He had sweat drying in streaks across his shoulders. He moved with reckless confidence. It was like his sweat evaporated and left a mist trail when he walked, his own audacity trailing behind him. He’d grown up in a town by a valley with stretching fields. As a boy, he learned that he could get what he wanted before anyone else noticed. He believed taking was less about malice and more about claiming.
The dirt from the field clung to his skin and traced the lines of his muscles. I could smell the earth on him before he even spoke. I imagined the dirt everywhere. On my mouth. On my skin.
Then, I watched him lay strawberries at my feet. He said he stole them from the valley by his home town.
He said the fields parted open for him, that the fruit begged to be taken for the sake of his woman’s hunger. He looked at me with a grin.
Said:
Eat.
Said:
They’re yours.
Said:
I want your lips stained, I want you to taste this with me.
And I did. I let him push each strawberry past my teeth. In truth, I wanted to taste every bite, every seed, every burst of glucose. It was a theft I wanted to be complicit in. A shared greed. I wanted every bit of proof that the world could be made for my pleasure.
I let the world shrink to this theft, to this moment of abundance. But even as I ate, I knew. I knew he was greedy, this lover of mine. Greedy like empires, taking without pause, without thought beyond themselves.
He would raid the world and call it devotion. I wanted to tell him, wanted to make him see that love was something to be savoured. To remind him that some things weren’t meant to be taken all at once.
“You always take more than you need,” I said.
Leaning close, letting his breath fan across my face, “And you let me.” Then, pressing the tip of a strawberry to my mouth. “You let me take it all.”
Learning is a counter hegemonic act
(This one was written after learning something.)
In the dim light of a workshop, a welder's hands urge molten metal through transformation. There is tension in the air. Those would be the sparks from the melting metal. Welding is a dangerous job. This is the danger zone M. Jacqui Alexander speaks of. Where the familiar, metal, is unmade, made molten, to create something new, whatever the welder in this metaphor is making.
Alexander writes, "The difference between the welder and those of us who fear fire is her knowledge that she has to become intimate with this danger zone in order to re-create, to create anew."
The heat of the forge is dangerous but necessary, one must learn to navigate the perilous proximity of destruction to harness the generative power it holds.
She says, “Living contradiction is necessary if we are to create the asylums of identification and solidarity with and for one another.”
The danger zone is a mutinous ground that is established by finding that shared desire for liberation. It is a pedagogical encounter defined by collective risk taking. It cannot be boring.
Trying Homeric verse but imagining Heracles as Kendall Roy from Succession
(This one really is an experiment in writing.)
Hear me, O Muse, who traces the wrath of Zeus, father of gods, father of men, whose voice bends mountains and shakes the seas. I, Heracles, speak of him, and the fire and shadow pressed into my bones. I have wrestled lions and rivers, I have climbed peaks that pierce the clouds, yet still I feel all my deeds are yours to measure. I rage against you, yet I am drawn, for who can resist the power that gave them life? Who can deny the weight of heaven pressing upon flesh? I am sinew and blood and mortal pride. I am simply the echo of a god who loves and wounds alike. I, Heracles, bear it.
Bethnal Green Textile Traders
(This one is hopefully going to be a part of a longer piece of writing.)
A warehouse that smells of jute and dust and oils rubbed into fibers to soften them. Bangladeshi traders moved through the bales: lifting, unrolling, inspecting, and stacking. Their hands were precise and unhurried.
The elders - my dada - were tall, wiry men with streaks of gray already in their hair, and they guided the younger boys. They laughed when a boy fumbled, but they offered tips. “See the weave,” one would say, holding up a strip of coarse jute. “A weak thread will ruin the whole batch.” The boys nodded, absorbing lessons not just in trade but in patience and pride. These interactions became weaving continuity across generations.
Afternoons brought small moments of reprieve. Men sipped their tea and read letters from Sylhet.
(…)
Pieces of blood orange/ peace of a blood orange
(This one was written after my friend came over with blood oranges.)
I am looking at the blood oranges you bought me as a gift this morning. They look like peace. The rind is rough and worn. Inside, the fruit is delicate and alive. All held together by a membrane thinner than hair but strong enough to contain its sweetness. I don’t know why a blood orange is making me so emotional. Blood oranges don’t come pre-peeled. They don’t arrive ready. They must be opened, offered, and divided gently onto open hands. They look like peace.
Thanks for reading if you got this far.
-seed