As we finalize moving into our new location, I wanted to give one last send off to @commongroundbooks first home on 128 N Bronough Street🥲🌈👋
I’m so grateful for every moment I got to spend walking these old rooms, surrounded by a history and future of queer literature. While I’m sad to say bye to a house that felt so distinctly like home, I’m incredibly excited for our future! Forever grateful to be a part of such a revolutionary, needed space in Florida💕🫶📚
mfa year 1/3 done✨ spent laughing and commiserating with beautiful friends, writing & coding poetry, teaching students to make video games, reading on the radio, befriending random animals, & haunting the libraries of western mass <3
Successfully moved into my new place in Northampton, largely thanks to my favorite person (who also happens to be so gorgeous and funny that I have to share these pics)💕 Love you @rezuzuwu 🫶
This past Wednesday, the world lost one of the weirdest and most wonderful creatures to grace this earth.
Calcifer was two years old when he was diagnosed with feline leukemia. Over the course of the past four years, he fought this diagnosis ferociously, astounding doctors by overcoming numerous life-threatening complications, far outliving the usual lifespan of an FeLV cat.
Ultimately, sometime earlier this month, his body stopped being able to produce new red blood cells, a condition with no avenue to fight back. Having lived a life full of love and companionship, Calcifer passed without suffering, peacefully in my arms.
As a steward of words, I am broken by how often they fail us. I miss my son. Even in trying, nothing could be said to express the weight of that sentence in each routine moment I’ve faced since his passing. He was a spark of joy in my life, and I am indescribably grateful to have received such genuine love in this lifetime. I miss him—fiercely, numbly, desperately—and in every other way grief attempts (and fails) to cauterize the loves we lose.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. As I mourn the very personal loss of Cal, I also mourn the continued heartbreaks of individuals, colleagues, and friends who are trying to make this world a kinder place. My heart is heavy with the violence of the shooting that took place Thursday on FSU’s campus, as well as the continued threads of violence being sewn in this country. It is easy to slip into the growing ocean of hopelessness this nation faces without recognizing it is man made and built with intentions of drowning us, for fear of our compassionate perseverance.
We must keep fighting and loving. It is necessary work, and the outcome, even when heavy, is what makes this life worth living. What a gift I received in learning this lesson from you and your persistence, my sweet, silly boy. I miss you Calcifer, and I love you.
