Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

If you don’t know my life and my struggle, can we be sisters?

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. I read Raging Flower and now I dream of raised fists and solidarity marches led by matriarchs fueled by café con leche where I can march alongside cigar-smoking doñas and Black Power dykes and all the world’s weirdos and no one is left out. And no one is living a lie.

During these moments of panic at home, I’d find Mom’s lap and rest my head in it. She’d run her fingers through my hair and calm all the internal noise. It was noise that told me I wasn’t good enough or I wouldn’t have enough time to finish whatever I was working on.

Burning hot cheeks, eyes swollen with tears that were all the words I couldn’t say—that’s what my shame looked like. I wanted to run.

Make your own religion out of doubt and curiosity.

I was a beast in the library. Libraries were where nerds like me went to refuel. They were safe havens where the polluted noise of the outside world, with the bullies and bro-dudes and antifeminist rhetoric, was all shut out. Libraries had zero tolerance for bullshit. Their walls protected us and kept us safe from all the bastards that never read a book for fun.

The way they argued was so civilized and yet wrenching. Like they weren’t going for blood, they were aiming at each other’s souls.

Was I not worth an Aaliyah-style four-page letter? Writing on both sides, pen pressed so hard against paper that the letter would feel textured and crumpled with pain? Was I not worth severity?

One minute it was about how eating different seeds affected menstruation

Seed cycling makes the book. WooT!

“You are your own person. If liking girls is a phase, so what? If it’s your whole life, who cares? You’re destined to evolve and understand yourself in ways you never imagined before. And you’ve got our blood running through your beautiful veins, so no matter what, you’ve been blessed with the spirit of women who know how to love.”

It felt good to pray, to remember to give thanks and feel connected to something beyond the confusion of being human.

I hadn’t met one person at the party that fit into the regular, straight, normal version of what society wanted them . . . wanted us to be. Gender-wise alone, it was as if the spectrum of the galaxy, with all its manifestations of human beings, beautifully imploded and all the people here were imbued with its majesty.

Her apology mixed itself up in personal heartbreak and feelings of guilt about everything

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.”

Man, moms are wild creatures. They got like this spidey sense about your whole entire self and it’s all mixed up with their fears and preconceived notions. And then you’re all like daydreaming about this other self, this super great, take-on-the-world self, and the purple notebook comes out. And there you are writing down your shit, not ’cuz your mom said so, but definitely ’cuz your mom blessed it so.

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,’”

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.”

All the women in my life were telling me the same thing. My story, my truth, my life, my voice, all of that had to be protected and put out into the world by me. No one else. No one could take that from me. I had to let go of my fear. I didn’t know what I was afraid of. I wondered if I’d ever speak my truth.

Womanhood stood out. I chewed it in my mouth like a piece of cheek. It was mine to puncture. Knowing it would heal over allowed me to be merciless with womanhood. I had to crack it open and investigate the layers. It often manifested itself from other women in the forms of caregiving and tenderness, like Mom cooking arroz con maíz to send me off. But there were ways in which womanhood pinched. It was too tight white stockings on chubby thighs before church and questions about boyfriends I never wanted.

I closed my eyes and imagined myself on my knees offering myself to the glory of womanhood. I broke off the pieces of me that were brittle from getting hollered at and also threatened on the block. Shook forth the doubt that came from lungs afraid of change and brick-ass NYC winters. Offered all of it to the glory and asked for clay to rebuild. I’d fold purpose, blue lipstick, and declarations of love pressed into kisses on bluffs, all of this into fresh womanhood. Just for me. Just mine. I could do that. That’s the thing. If my life was going to change, it was on me: these hips, this brain, and this attitude. I looked over my list again.

“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.”

And now it’s on me. I gotta shout when I need to and ask more questions. And demand better of myself and everything around me.”

We are the ones that have to show up for each other. We gotta share our money, resources, homes, energy, and histories with each other, no matter what.