Flow (Grip, #0.5)

by Kennedy Ryan

In conversations like these, before we say our words, they’re ammunition. After we’ve said them, they’re smoking bullets.

“When other people are as outraged and as curious about those problems as Black people are,” he says, “then maybe we can solve them together.”

“Art, specifically music, is a living thing,” he says. “It isn’t just absorbed by the people who hear it, but it absorbs them. So, we shared hip-hop with the world, and it isn’t just ours anymore. The Beastie Boys heard it. Eminem heard it. Whoever heard it fell in love with it, added to it, and became a part of it.”

We both gave each other space to be misunderstood, because we really wanted to understand.

“So what color am I then?” I ask before thinking better of it. He’ll probably just say I’m white, obviously. “What color are you?” he repeats, his eyes never leaving my face. “You, Bristol, are a freaking prism.”

‘Poetry’ by Pablo Neruda.

There are too few perfect moments in this life. Far too few of us get them, but I am privileged to have this one with this man. When he empties his chest of his heart and empties his body of his soul for me under a starry sky on a Ferris wheel. And I know. In this moment, I know that I’m lost to him. It has been a matter of days. It has been a string of moments. It has not been long enough to tell him, but in my heart, I know I am lost.

At the top of the world, so close we could almost touch the sky and with only the stars watching, I found out what a kiss should be.