I’ve moved around a bit.
Colorado Springs was a shock and so was San Jose. I found myself invisible in a way that reeked of avoidance and inconvenience. Moving to Oakland was like rubbing lotion on ashy elbows. I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath so hard, how tense my entire body.
Quickly forgotten was the discomfort of being so immediately “othered”. My Blackness my Fatness, my Queerness, my Witchiness was at best celebrated and at worst met with an “of course you are”.
Here in Grass Valley I’m again oddity.
Navigating it has been somewhere between hilarious and hilariously depressing
Sometimes white people go all out to prove they are not racist. They often stumble over micro-aggression after micro-aggression in the process They ignore me or put themselves in my way. They touch my hair, my body and stare. They tell me I’m so pretty or distance themselves as far as they can.
Everyone dresses “mountain” here.
I can’t tell if they are queer or conservative.
Unlike my time in Colorado Springs and San Jose I am not silent about who I am. I point out the MAGA assholes in the parking lot, I openly jeer at the confederate flag wearing imbecile in the grocery store until they blush and run away.
I’m not content to be invisible here.
Sometimes I’m terrified but the fuck it in me gets the best of me.
I get to live in this place.
I get to revel in the changing of the seasons and the clean air and all this beauty. I get to fuck up some of these people’s sense of what is appropriate with my loud laughter. I get to dance in these streets and add my voice to a growing community of queer, trans, gender non-binary, Black and Brown, makers, creators, lovers and witches already here.
May we continue to inhabit
May we continue to reclaim and create more spaces
May we continue to bring (with reverence) healing to this bloody colonized land in ways informed deeply by the magic of our melanin, our resilience, our shared traumas and journey to sovereignty.
They/ Them/ Femme
Age : 37
Location : Grass Valley/ Oakland
