|| the bitter//sweet project || chapter two: free//fall Flyboy In 2021, my father, ever the Virgo, decided that for his birthday, he wanted to do something that would forever mark that year as a moment of growth, and that I would be doing it with him as a show of support. He called me first thing in the morning, waking me up from my early morning torpor, telling me that he would be at the house shortly and that we were going somewhere for his birthday. My father is notoriou

|| the bitter//sweet project || chapter two: free//fall Runway Before this bitter//sweet project was anything more than a loose collection of scribbled-down ideas, those beginning dregs of thoughts found home in this piece. It only assumed true essay form while I was reading “A Little Devil in America” by Hanif Abdurraqib in March of 2025. I was inspired by the languid stretch of his long, unfurling sentences, finding a certain freedom in their breathless pace. The way they

|| the bitter//sweet project || chapter one: san//kofa|| part two- Black for What?|| I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission.” Lines 47-49 “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)” - Nikki Giovanni The original title for this project was Blackness in Shades of Bittersweet. It came to me at a time when I was trying to articulate for myself the

|| the bitter//sweet project || chapter one: san//kofa|| part one- Everything is Now|| 2025 was the year of Sankofa for me. Sankofa is an Akan word from Ghana that roughly translates to “go back and get it” and is visually represented by a bird looking backwards. The meaning of the phrase is to examine one’s past to understand the present and future. It highlights how the past is always present, and the present is always future– the gears of time already in motion long befo

I started this piece the night of January 30th, 2026. All throughout that, day my feed was consumed with the news of two Black journalists, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, along with two Black politicians, Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lyndell Lundy, were detained by the FBI for what the Trump Administration is insisting on calling an invasion (An in-freaking-vasion!) of a church, but in truth was an Anti-ICE protest. Regardless of the case, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort’s presence

I have made it to a quarter of a century! There are many birthdays that pass without any real sense of change or difference, but this...