Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

But I fall asleep with that book in my arms because words protect hearts and I’ve got this ache in my chest that won’t go away.

“You must walk in this world with the spirit of a ferocious cunt. Express your emotions. Believe that the universe came from your flesh. Own your power, own your connection to Mother Earth. Howl at the moon, bare your teeth, and be a goddamn wolf.”

Kissing was its own good-bye. Her lips found my lips. Our love was safe if we kept it on our tongues and in between our teeth.

Phen had the kind of beauty that boys with attitude and slim bones get away with. They’re the type of boys that writers like Allen Ginsberg fell in love with and bled out poetry for.

“I mean maybe for some folks it’s like that, but for us, it’s allowing room for intimacy with other folks independent of our relationship,”

“It’s everyone’s job to come up with a theodicy. One that has room for every inch of who they are and the person they evolve into.”

White allies, we ask that you respect this space, own your privileges, and remain open to your own journey.

Our entire existence is constantly being validated and yeah, we have lots of shit to deal with because of the patriarchy. But for goddess sake, check your privilege. We’re the ones that need to give women of color space for their voices.”

“You said, ‘We’re the ones that need to give women of color space for their voices,’” Maxine replied, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. “Y’all don’t need to give us anything.”

Society, government, white supremacist power structures, blatant hatred of women, and a whole slew of other institutions are all working together to make it so that you gotta dig to find out even a shred of truth. They don’t want you to dig.

Maybe America just swallowed all of us, including our histories, and spat out whatever it wanted us to remember in the form of something flashy, cinematic, and full of catchy songs.

“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.”

Her consistent linking of genitals to gender as an absolute is violent as hell. It’s a closed fist instead of open arms, you know?

I’m going to love you without being in love with you.

At no point in her retelling did she ask me how I felt when it all went down.

But I wanted to believe that we were all love renegades and that we didn’t have to discard one another. People break hearts and love disappears.

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

But it was August and what does love mean at the end of a summer?

James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. “‘You don’t have a home until you leave it and then when you have left it, you can never go back,’”

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. But I’m not here to make space for good white people.

That adoration, that way we elevate folks and can’t hold them accountable. We get so caught up in the easy glow of them that we forget to do the same for ourselves.”

“This is a moment of reckoning. I love you, but I refuse to continue loving someone who won’t be real about their shit and change up their actions to match.”