Instructions on Not Giving Up

A poem by Ada Limón & a word of thanks

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Hi hello hi!

It’s been a minute. I’m hoping to get into a more consistent rhythm this year, which, according to Chani, has only just begun. And truly: I feel like I just finished processing 2022 and can now turn my sights to 2023. I’m finally ready, and watching “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” sweep the Oscars completely energized me. Hearing both Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan say, in different ways to not give up, was gospel I needed to hear at this particular intersection of life.

Thank you for your kindness while I figure out my new year flow, my goals for this newsletter and beyond.

Because it’s my favorite part of these dispatches, here a quick squirt of the juicy juice (or, what’s on my radar this month): Trans Action workshops, the form-defying and breathtaking documentary Milisuthando, this sexy new lip jelly, a forthcoming vinyl of Audre Lorde poems with liner notes by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Miami Fruit, Roxane Gay in convo with Lamya H about Hijab Butch Blues. I’ve been working out my hopes and frustrations with two albums: Nia Archives, which is perfect for grief letting by dancing and Pigments by Dawn Richard, which is perfect for grief letting through meditating and stillness. And I’m air frying pretty much everything.

I am grateful to all of you for your patience. I hope you’ll continue to stick around.

With that, here’s Ada’s beautiful poem, from which the title of today’s dispatch borrows its name.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

🌞🌞🌞

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