I feel like I were a tree, I would be a weeping willow tree on a grassy sunny hill by a river or swamp in New Orleans. People would go on picnics with their loved ones and sit in my shade. Or maybe small children would play hide and go seek around me,  or dream up stories to reenact and chase around my roots and trunk. They would dance and play in my drooping stems that tangle into each other like strands of hair. When I was a kid I desperately wanted to know how to braid my own hair but I wasn’t very good at it. One of the remnants of my anxieties of being a “failed girl”. I always thought weeping willows looked like they were the most sentient kinds of trees. I just liked that they had hair you could practice braiding. I’ve never been to New Orleans but weeping willows always reminded me of what I imagined my grandma must have been surrounded by. The smell of humid air, swamp bubbles, gumbo, crawdads, the sounds of funeral jazz parades rewriting what Black grief looks like. 

There is something so beautiful about a tree that weeps- flowing tears shaded green instead of blue-frozen on a stem attached to a living, breathing tree. I feel like I would have flowers towards my roots, maybe some flower buds blossoming on my trunk like that one tree in my backyard that I like so much. Hell, I’m literally writing this while sitting in the tree my mom planted when I was 6. 20 years ago, Sean and I took a picture together standing next to this very tree when it was no more than a twig with some leaves sprouting. I grew up quite literally with this tree. I knew when we took this picture at 6 years old, that my adult self was then looking back at me lovingly. 

I knew I wasn’t going to grow up being a woman. I knew I would be something deeply needed and magical. It’s funny, I used to be so scared of climbing trees. Didn’t like heights first of all, but I also hated how much of a spectacle it made of my body. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Dad was great at climbing trees-always loved it. Maybe I was afraid I would find yet another thing I wasn’t good at. Another thing about trees is it requires you to trust yourself that you won’t fall and I so rarely felt like I could trust my body. I am lucky to be born able-bodied and yet I was so scared to see what I’m capable of. I know I’ve veered off from the prompt but, I like telling this story. Trusting myself and my body is requiring me to accept my body. Trees don’t have to do that. Trees are already knowing of what they are- rooted into the soil. We should all be like trees. My roots would touch water. They would curl into the swamp like roller coaster tracks looping around themselves. They would be thick and sappy- Just like me haha. Salamanders and birds would make a home in me. Part of me is rooted in the grassy hill and the rest of me leaks into the swamp. I’m a short and stubby  willow tree but that makes me great practice for the timid children, scared of trusting themselves, to be able to start their journey to climb to great heights.

Photos with Nathan Blue in Febuary

What is our human relationship to violence and on top of that, death and grief? Now that people are being vaccinated and things are opening up again, there is so much whiplash we are going to have to face. 

After over a year of a global pandemic that has killed far too many people, we still do not give time for grief. In addition to the pandemic, state-sanctioned violence against Black people and multiple mass shootings are not disappearing. We are staring at 3 major points of mass death in human history. How are these three major moments going to be faced? What are we doing?