By Billy-Ray Belcourt
1. He told me he was into natives, but he couldn’t love the traumas hidden in my breathing.
2. How do you tell a ghost that it’s already dead, that its body is a fairy tale you stopped reading a long time ago?
3. What happens when wounds start to work like bandages?
4. One time I slept with a man who looked like he was dying. Each time his body found mine it felt like he was collecting fragments of it. It was as if I were an elixir, a potion that could extend his life if he just took me long enough.
5. Sometimes love feels like vanishing, like taking apart pieces of yourself and giving them to someone who can’t use them.
6. He was native, too, so I slept with him. I wanted to taste the same histories of violence that I couldn’t get rid of with mouthwash. I wanted to smell his ancestors in his armpits, the aroma of their decaying flesh, how they refuse to wilt into nothingness. I wanted to touch his brown skin, to make a kind of friction so complex other worlds would emerge in our colliding.
7. What happens when ‘decolonial love’ becomes a story you tell yourself after he falls asleep?
8. He was my own kind of drug: the more I used him, the better I felt; the worse I felt.
9. I tell him: you breathe us, we are in you, look at the blood on your hands.
10. Sometimes not loving is the most radical thing you can do.
Wow. This is powerful stuff. Nice.
LikeLiked by 25 people
Beautiful.
LikeLiked by 17 people
Billy, I needed these this morning.
Thank you for sharing.
(decolonial) love every part of you.
LikeLiked by 18 people
Reblogged this on #postgradprobs.
LikeLiked by 15 people
This is so beautiful.I love everything about it.
LikeLiked by 18 people
Amazing👏🏻
LikeLiked by 19 people
Loved every word . Very touching 💓
LikeLiked by 19 people
I just wrote my first blog people .. please read and let me know ur thoughts xx from blogger to blogger
LikeLiked by 17 people
The violence in the images expressed here depict so much depth. Amazing!
LikeLike
Beautiful. Powerful. Real.
LikeLike
This is amazing. “to make a kind of friction so complex other worlds would emerge in our colliding.” So beautiful.
LikeLike
Yes, beautiful and touching. Great post!
LikeLike
This will stay with me a long while. Strong and vivid!
LikeLike
Wow, this is just beautiful. Heartfelt and heartbreaking all at once. Number three really hit me, “What happens when wounds start to work like bandages?”, indeed. Thank you for sharing.
LikeLike
Billy, this article is beautiful even though I’m still young to understand its meaning behind it.
But the fact that you write it with so much emotion, tact and rawness is what makes it so rich in its literature.
Cheers!
Nurfatma
LikeLike
Dayum. This is it..
LikeLike
This touched me to my soul….Thank you
LikeLike
Wow! This is good work, for some reason 10 is the most daunting to me.
LikeLike
This is so amazingly beautiful. You write with such precision, it’s wonderful. I love how you wrote of violence in love… sad and beautiful, it’s everything.
LikeLike
” What happens when wounds start to work like bandages?” wow…
LikeLike
Billy, I am amazed by you.
LikeLike
Number five really struck a chord with me Billy. These are amazing. x
LikeLike
Wow. What incredible imagery. Thank you
LikeLike
I wish I would have had this a year ago
LikeLike
#10 though. So melancholic and profound.
LikeLike
Hauntingly beautiful
LikeLike
The word choice and metaphors were incredibly powerful. Great writing.
LikeLike
Your emotions have been put in to words oh so beautifully!
LikeLike
don’t know what to say because it’s too beautiful to comment on. x
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing.
Powerful is an understatement.
LikeLike
This is beautiful. Powerful. Intense. I love it. Thanks for sharing.
LikeLike
Very beautiful..
LikeLike
i love how raw this is!!! sick piece ❤
LikeLike
Superbly penned and titled. Love this highly original work!
LikeLike
Wow!!!!!!!!!!……… first time visiting and all I can say is wow. First thing I read and I am rendered speechless. Well done!!!!…..
LikeLike
This is so powerful, so raw, so beautiful. Thank you.
LikeLike
Beautiful and powerful… Vivid imagery😀
LikeLike
This is very beautiful
LikeLike
Wow…I loved every word:-)
LikeLike
whoa amazing . heart breaking and raw
LikeLike
This was beautiful!
LikeLike
very touching. Every word
LikeLike
an amazing read…the fifth line was awesome..beautiful
LikeLike
Spellbinding.
LikeLike
Beautiful. So strong.
LikeLike