I write: code, poetry, prose, and tweets.
I am a self-proclaimed hermit, recluse, and extreme introvert. One dream that always brings me the best kind of joy is winning the lottery, buying a ton of land and a small cabin in any mountain range, and living my best off the grid life for as long as the wilderness will have me. I still have high hopes for that dream, but now it includes a farm and less hermit-like tendencies.
There is nothing more impossible, even now in 2018, than asking to see myself on the television screen. As an asexual woman loving Afro-Caribbean Latinx woman, the chances of me seeing myself for a accumulation of those pieces in one person alone on a television series or in film is like asking for the sun, moon, and stars as well as a billion dollars. It’s totally possible! The probability of it is definitely there, but I shouldn’t hold my breath either. So I break those pieces down, and find comfort in characters that sort of resemble who I am. I look for Afro-Latinx, Black, or brown characters, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. I look for queer folks, regardless of racial/ethnic identity or gender identity. I find empowerment with any characters who could be genderqueer or androgynous because I can identify with them as well as female identified people. I cast a broad net and find a bit of myself with everyone because it’s the only way I’ll be able to see something of myself on screen. It’s been that way my whole life.
Continue reading “Where Am I? An Ongoing Conversation on Representation”
Imaginary friends are the OG original characters before fan fiction ever became a thing after the internet blew up. The following is a scene in my mind if I ever had the chance to introduce my two favorite imaginary friends together (this is definitely still a work in progress):
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Wary eyes glared at each other from across the room. Ice blue locked on dark brown, both filled with judgement and more than a hint of dislike. It wasn’t about who came first, but about who did the most for their creator. Who held her when she cried as a child versus who destroyed her enemies now when the world became too much. Protectors, they both were, but friends. Did they know friendship outside what was designed in them? Love? Could they understand the dichotomy they represented in the mind of someone who once saw herself as righteous compared to the realist, the grey, the demon who wasn’t really a demon as much as a djinn with too much fire, too much power, and not enough morality to care what she did with it. Both pairs of eyes rolled. She was thinking too much again, they said without words. They didn’t need words. Just smug smirks of understanding. Of acknowledgement. No, they’d not ever be friends. They both thought they knew best, wanted to be the sole protectors and providers. Their creator apologizes, has apologized, for that glitch in their matrix. She hadn’t wanted them to become as she was: a servant, a server, a provider. But broad shoulders shrugged off her useless sentiments, not in anger but acceptance. They were who they were and happy with their places in life. One, a dark knight, a paladin, with a righteous fury that slashed at her creator’s enemies with a broadsword and held evil at bay. Another, the djinn, a creature of fire and nature, a destructive force that brushed off what was considered right or wrong and thought only of what was wanted, who catered to her creator’s every whim because why the fuck not? Continue reading “A Scene Between Original Characters”
Just a little something while I was flying to Tampa yesterday:
Airplane
I’m in a fucking can in the sky. I am gliding to my death. I’m touching clouds, staring down below at the world so small, I feel like a damn giant.
I love to fly. I love seeing all that God created from a height only They can reach and I can never aspire to.
I’m afraid of heights. I’m small and I was made of the earth and my feet should never leave the ground.
Erisel Cruz 