Archive for category: Uncategorized

The Gospel of Joy

First, wake before the noise.
 Let the morning rest on your skin
 like a secret nobody can take.

Boil water. Add cardamom, maybe mint.
 Name the steam as it rises.
 Today it could be Grace. Or Glitter.
 Something alive.

Play a song that makes your bones remember
 what laughter felt like
 before the world tried to tax it.

Dress in the colors that make strangers stare.
 Wear yellow like you invented the sun.
 Paint your lips in defiance
 not for beauty,
 but for proof you exist.

When you pass another queer soul on the street,
 nod like a shared gospel.
 That tiny acknowledgment:
 a hymn of survival.

Eat slowly.
 Touch gently.
 Love like you are building a nation
 out of every yes your body has ever whispered.

They will call this joy a distraction.
 They will call it excess.
 But you know
 joy is a borderless country
 we return to when language fails.

Tonight, when the moon lowers herself
 into your window frame,
 let her see you dancing,
 still shining,
 still here.

Gather in the kitchen,
 bodies swaying between gospel and bass,
 air thick with pepper, laughter
 of something holy refusing to die.

Jade is frying plantains again,
 says the oil talks back like an auntie
 loud, protective, full of truth.
 I slice mangoes the way my mother taught me:
 slow, reverent, like blessing a wound.

We eat with our hands,
 lick sweetness from our fingers,
 and call it prayer.

Outside, the news tries to remind us
 we shouldn’t exist this loudly.
 But we do.
 We braid each other’s hair,
 paint our nails gold,
 rename every hurt into something worth keeping.

Someone plays Nina,
 and the room softens
 we sing along

to be seen.

This is our resistance
 to laugh in a country that calls our joy arrogance,
 to hold each other without apology,
 to dance until the floor remembers
 we were here.

And when the night folds into itself,
 we step outside, glowing
 brown skin shimmering with sweat and belonging.
 Together watching the stars lean close,
 whispering, look at them
 still here,
 still holy,
 still bright.

 Every Sunday we gather
 arms full of groceries, hearts half-full
 and trying.

Mara brings flowers from the bodega,
 their stems already leaning toward us.
 Dee hums something off-key,
 and the sound wraps around the room
 like safety.

We know what it means to be uninvited
 so we make our own table,
 wide enough for the ghosts and the living,
 for whoever needs to rest awhile.

Here, no one asks who we love
 or how we survived.
 We already know.
 Instead, we pass the salt,
 refill each other’s joy,
 and build a small country out of care.

Outside, the world is still
 a little too sharp,
 a little too loud.
 But inside, we name the soft things
 and mean them.

When the lights flicker,
 We pull candles from drawers,
 and the glow makes every face golden.

This is family
 made, chosen,
 stitched from memory and mercy.
 This is how we stay.
 This is how we shine.