Audre, It’s 2026 and They Are Still Trying To Hold Our Hands Still

Collage by adria Moses

Writing is time travel for me. I can go anywhere I want and really be there. When I write, my body follows. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to write about two past experiences this week. Not just talk or ruminate about them, but write them clear as day.

My body felt looser afterwards. My shoulders relaxed a bit more, and I was lighter. Writing could be a way out, yes, but lately it’s been more about transmutation. I take something painful, or not, and turn it into a different texture.

Audre Lorde said it plainly and reminds us,

“Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into ideas, then into more tangible action.”

Survival is then resistance, our making is activism, it is our future, it is our humanhood.

We could then conclude there are forces beyond our control that do not want our survival, our making, our activism, our life force. As the years turn, we confront the same monster.

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Watching white supremacy try to keep itself alive has kept me from making. I am well aware of its last efforts to stay relevant.

Capitalism spoils this country. We, I, you, have all paid the price. Institutions step on fingers, breaking small bones needed to pay attention to detail. Of course, I can say a good amount of my energy has gone towards simply trying to get my own words out because there is a lack of support for us non-academic, Black, queer, disabled writers. Sure, I am not the only one.

I spend a great amount of time making doctor appointments, too. Fighting with disability on the phone, staying on hold, advocating, expending energy I actually do not have because survival is also advocacy. The forces that be have weighed heavily on beings meant to make, write, and create something. These are just the few instances that come to mind.

But when I talk about forces, I’m speaking about fascism. Let me name it clearly. If you are paying enough attention, you will realize it is here. You’ll recognize some of these qualities happening right now; if you cannot recognize them, your body certainly does.

Ultranationalism, the extreme focus on national identity and the perceived decline, ultimately seeking to restore a mythical past, aka some made-up shit. Authoritarianism, a dictatorial leader and a single-party state holding absolute control. Suppression of dissent, active destruction of democratic processes, labor unions, and political opposition, along with strict censorship. Militarism and violence, the glorification of violence, military force, and war to achieve national goals. Scapegoating, which is directing societal anger toward targeted minority groups or external enemies.

When people say they are not political, I want them to understand that they don’t have a choice. Your body is birthed political.

We wage an unreasonable war on Iran in 2026. We allow hate groups to flourish on our own soil. Thousands of babies, women, children, men, and journalists have been murdered in Palestine. The promotion of barbarism is alive and well.

All of this influences us, whether we believe it or not. Green juices, high vibrations, good vibes, even money, cannot save you from this violence.

This culture strips us of our energy. It occupies our time–distracted, it reduces love and promotes confusion, whiteness wants to hold on to its name so badly. When we lose art, expression, speaking, writing, building, and growing, we are silenced and erased, and powers prevail.

But joy can be the refusal.

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I’ve had to teach myself it’s safe to go there. To experience joy on poisoned lands. It sounds dramatic, but I had to grow into it as a non-negotiable.

Admittedly, I used to squander my time. Now, I find joy in my solitude, and I feel like everyone says this, simply because it’s true. It’s a staycation in Detroit with your favorite journal, a pen, Wild Seed, a laptop, chocolate cake, something to say, and the courage to do just that. It’s dinner around the corner, late-night writing, live music, and silence. I find that joy finds me when I dare to go towards myself in a world that benefits from my fragmentation.

My perceived gift, what I feel so deeply, I am supposed to do. Something is exciting about making a collage with my hands, ensuring a daily orgasm, writing that poem that hurts so good. Joy wants me.

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Still, where does it go when we simply do not have the will to create? When they have taken too much?

It gets swallowed. Ingested. Not fully chewed. Then it gets stuck, and so on, so forth. All of that gets stuck in the mind, rotating and regurgitating itself, driving itself insane. A distraction, again, that’s why when Lorde says,

“For within structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive.”

When I write, I feel. I am the ultimate rebel in a heartless world. True intelligence to me, after all, is empathy.

I release those feelings into the world, knowing they were made in honesty and at their most potent, when I finally had enough space to make a ceremony with them. Once they left me, they lived free from my fascia. They became water for the earth and stood tall against forces, unfeeling. Alchemy thus becomes of value, a practice, a way of existing in a world driven by distortion. A weapon even.

I write towards all women, intersectionally. I write towards my mother and every mother that has been born into this world. They inherit my freedom. Get free. I write towards the artists who are abstract and logical, who find meaning and patterns, who understand that gifts come in many forms. Get free. I absolutely write towards my Ancestors. They write towards me too. All my words, an offering.

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