Grief

Sometimes it feels as if the universe is working against me, like in those moments when all I want is get to home, but I hit every single red light. And sometimes, the universe doles out small doses of relief like today when I just happened to have the day off, right when I thought I was going to completely lose my shit. Two nights ago I was lying in bed reading my Twitter timeline as the news broke about the attack on the Emanuel AME church. In a way it was like watching the tide pull away from the shoreline, knowing the wave was coming, but being unable to escape. The BBC broke the story first. And fifteen minutes a tweet from CNN. Within an hour it was the only thing Black Twitter was talking about, and then all that Twitter was tweeting about. 

In the Company of Women

A week ago I spent three days in the exclusive company of women. We were celebrating the dwindling bachelorette status of my good friend, Leyna, in the oddly German town of Leavenworth, Washington. I went into the weekend with unconfronted nerves — I mean a houseful of women, most of whom I didn’t know, for three days, sounded like the opening of horror story.