October 1, 2019
- And everyone in the theater laughs long enough that I am taken by their discomfort. The moment hanging uncomfortable, thick. But the tables turn later in the movie when she exacts her revenge, all “YAS VIOLA, YAS QUEEN.” All “THAT’S MY BITCH, YAS.” But I’m left stomach sick, I’m left with dissonance. How fast they turned, recovered. How fast we shift from questionable, consumable, consumed. Held. Hunted. Haunted.
- On a trip East, I disappear in a way I’m unfamiliar with. Instead of being constantly watched but never seen, I am suddenly neither. Not one, but one of many, lose myself inside of the simultaneous known and unknown-ness. That week the internet was plastered with pictures of Nia, who we couldn’t or wouldn’t praise in life, but was lifted up in death.
- Three months after the movie comes out, in an unrelated interview, Liam Neeson details how, after his friend was attacked, he stalked the nighttime streets, drunk and angry, singing for the specific retribution of Black blood. Michelle Rodriguez says he couldn’t possibly be racist. “Dude, have you watched Widows? His tongue was so far down Viola Davis’s throat.”
- Here, I am more body than me. More flesh than self? Am I just voice? Mouth. Choir. How much do I get to be at any given time, how little? And if I don’t speak for the whole? Am I more monolith, more monologue? Am I more flesh than self, a story to sell?
- So maybe my body’s never gonna be home to nobody but me. All I can do is keep arriving. Keep coming home to myself. Leave the light on. Not afterthought. Not back to build bridge on. More than mouth. More than much. Not unknown, unseen. Unbothered. Unbossed.
- Not object. Subject.