Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

“Your one job is to just accept what a person feels comfortable sharing about themselves. No one owes you info on their gender, body parts, or sexuality.”

You gotta question everything, especially who you give your love and respect to. This is about perspective, you know?

reading would make me brilliant, but writing would make me infinite.”

once you’re able and confident enough in yourself to leave, the world changes you, and you’re not the same person anymore ever again and that’s the beautiful part,”

“But what’s missing from the fist in her fight is any sort of racial awareness. That erasure validates whiteness, frames narratives of people of color around poverty and violence, and propels her into perpetuating the very structures she’s trying to dismantle.

“People you love fuck up,” Zaira said, she touched my knee. “You weed out the assholes from the warriors. Pick up on folks who aren’t soft spaces for your heart. Move with forgiveness but listen to your instincts when it comes to eradicating the unworthy from your spirit.

“Juliet, I am a racist fucking moron and any white person living in this damn country, if any of us tell you otherwise, is a liar and not to be trusted. You can be white and poor and racist as hell and wear your Confederate flags, and there’s rich white people who hide their racism behind homeowner’s associations and luxury condo income requirements. And then there are hippie gentrifying, well-intentioned whites like me, and none of us are better than the other.

“Never thought I’d have a baby,” she said, “then one day, I realized that I’d accomplished everything I set out to do. And I thought why not elevate my existence and create life. So I did and it’s so fucking rad, Juliet.”

Don’t question yourself unless you hurt someone else.

Regarding ally-ship, everyone should read the article “Accomplices not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex” via Indigenous Action Media. Their main point is that we need “accomplices not allies.”