I could feel the weight of your tongue heavy with quiet and stories to tell. Perhaps you took my reticence as a sign of aggression, if not suppression toward your identity, but I never intended to trespass against your agency. I just wanted people to see me more than they saw you, and now I have learned that perhaps the two of us cannot be mutually exclusive.
I sat and rhythmically squeezed a smiling, yellow rubber-ball and watched my blood, as dark as shiraz, inflate the flat canvas of a plastic bag.
I was at the Kilasch hospital in Godrej, India on a field trip to study sustainable practices in a small village. We were given a tour of the hospital which was designed with sustainability in mind. When we arrived at the lobotomy lab, our tour guide, Pranav, told us that the hospital was dangerously low on blood donations.
Black and Wordy 