It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.

I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing.

Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck.

My name is indigenous to my country, it is not easy to pronounce, it takes effort to say correctly and I am absolutely in love with the sound of it and its meaning. Also, it's not the kind of name you baby, slip into sweet talk mid sentence, late night phone conversation, whisper into the receiver kind of name, so, of that I am glad.

Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you're wearing, who you're around, what you're doing. Recreate and repeat.

The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world.

Light attracts light. But sometimes your light attracts moths and your warmth attracts parasites. Protect your space and energy