They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

by Hanif Abdurraqib

Joy, or the concept of joy, is often toothless and vague because it needs to be. It is both hollow and touchable, in part because it is something that can’t be explained as well as it can be visualized and experienced.

The soundtrack to grief isn’t always as dark as the grief itself. Sometimes what we need is something to make the grief seem small, even when you know it’s a lie.

When you watch hope closely enough, manifested in enough people, you can start to feel it too.

We are nothing without our quick and simple blessings, without those willing to drag optimism by its neck to the gates of grief and ask to be let in, an entire choir of voices singing at their back.

The problem is that everyone wants to talk about language entirely independent of any violence that the existence of that language has accumulated over time. If, for example, a word can be hurled through the air while a boot comes down on a face, that part of the word’s lineage has to be accounted for.

It’s in the spirit of male loneliness to imagine that someone has to suffer for it.

There are endless ways that we have found and will find to blame women for things, particularly when it prevents us from unraveling our own unhappiness.