Yasmine Tadross

Dear Bag Lady, How do you do it? How do you carry the weight of the world and yet take up so little space? You occupy like a fire escape, Operate within a small square dark cubicle and only speak when someone sparks your flame. Dear Bag Lady, How do provide space for others and not yourself? You are amazing at making sure everyone else is taken care of yet leaving yourself lying on the bedroom floor without the will to get up. Dear Bag Lady, You have the ability to recognize everyone's humanity, but your own. You often see yourself as part android. Having the ability to portray that you are brilliant Do every task, take on every project, make sure everything I say is articulate, and program yourself to be as nice as possible to make sure everyone has a smile. Dear Bag Lady, This time you finally cracked, you enter into a room that is filled with 20 people that feels like 200. your battery has depleted. Trying to engage in conversations about professionalism an

I went to a pub with a friend, It was a Wednesday and 40% off appetizers, Because we both know we are not paying full price for that shit. We were talking about Angel from the tv show Pose , He said that I was similar to her, specifically around white boys. I don’t know, I have always been fond of them. They are sooo…… normative. They walk the street like there is no care in the world, it just turns me on. He told me jokingly that “I needed to stop going after them.'' Though just for humor, I really thought about it. For most of my life, I thought if white men desired me, that would be the end goal. I would have reached the pinnacle of desirability, Run through a hill where the bright green grass is up to my knee. We can run together holding hands and lay down next to each other as the sunsets. That was never the case, white boys saw me as a spectacle. I am fabulous on a stage or pole, but ugly when walking on the sidewalk. A person to desire at 3am as they ar

To My 16-Year-Old Self, You are about to start puberty, I know because I am going through the third one right now. (PS you are trans and going to go through three different puberties!) Our hormones are currently spiraling like a roller coaster ride that never ends and we both seem to have crushes on 5 people, a few of them we should not be having, but we still have them because fuck it.  We are both physically, emotionally, and philosophically busy because either it is the workload as well as working, being a loner, or trying to figure out your next steps in life; you are just busy.  However with me right now, I have friends, which is kind of odd because I am not used to it. By the time you are 22, your only experience with friends will be for about 3 years or so, but this time you are dealing with parties.  I will tell you later.  You are currently living through a conversion therapy now, the holy trinity is telling you that you deserve to be cured and that you a

To my Insecurities, I just wanted to let you know that I love you.  That I apologize that most of your life, people have hurt you.  Being raised in a post 9/11 era, though I didn't immigrate to this country, my body has been treated as foreign. By both white and brown communities. I didn't grow up having friends, didn't go to sleepovers, high school parties, or tailgates. I sat alone and created worlds in which my body was not discarded like an empty plastic cup, but I was queen.  That I walked into rooms and everyone would turn heads.  In which if someone was policed, communities came to the rescue.  You see, I wasn't born in the wrong body, I was born in a world that is scared of what I am capable of. Now that I have obtained community and western forms of "success", I am afraid. I am afraid of losing my loved ones.  To lose connection. That at some point they will find better people and leave me.  People don't realize that

$95 million to each resident of West Garfield Park is roughly $5343.52, that is not nearly enough for reparations, however, the cop academy is reverse Robin Hood; give to the reach, displace the poor, and leave them with nothing. A cooperative food shop and community gardens would be open on every single block to feed the masses. Their bellies will be full and youth won't have to be reminded that whiteness is the only way to be nourished.  Every person would have at least their own 400 sq ft paradise. To be reminded that housing is not a commodity, it is a human right. It is essential to life and as vital like honey; it pollinates, rejuvenates, and spreads the sweetness from generation to generation. Without housing, there is no community.  Arts, education, and community centers would be open and will teach black and brown youth that they are royalty. That your life is a throne and should be praised by many. To understand that you don't have to grow up so quickly. Your lif

It was Sunday morning, I was walking out the La Salle stop on the blue line, wearing green lipstick, a cat wing, black eye shadow, skirt, It was the first time in a while where I felt the magic word, "pretty"! Then someone looked at me and yelled "Disgusting Dirty Faguet". The worst part was that everyone remained complicit within that stop. No one wanted to protect me, it was as if my body was a vampire; my reflection was for everyone's consumption, but my own. Realizing that no matter what my friends think, the rest of the world will see me as disposable. We have an epidemic of trans people of color being murdered. Our bodies are deemed worthy of our own violence. We have systematically and nicely colonized sexuality and gender to only desire the very few. To tell us that our bodies are DDFs To every queer and trans person of color, Your life span is beyond the age of 25. You deserve to see your own reflection, whatever that may be. You s

You are someone who makes me feel special, I want to put my head on your shoulder as you put my arm around me. As we turn each other around, we seal our emotional connection with a kiss. We lock lips as we close our eyes potentially thinking about a third person in the mix (Idris Elba). We both put each other's lips on each other's necks to increase our passion. Slowly taking off each article of clothing we are wearing as we embrace each other's trauma-induced body. I Start to embrace and lick your body down as I approach your dick and I swallow. Your body quivers and moans as it is deep in my throat. As I come up, you put my body against the wall and start to embrace my brown hairy body that always seems foreign to me. It is the first time a guy actually embraced my body because everyone disposed of it. From being called a disgusting faggot on the subway to being told you are worthy of your own violence. The first time, someone treated my body like it was not fo

Often times when we think of loss, the first thing we think of is death. Of a loved one, a pet, someone we have idolized, and/or some other being that gave us love. Loss comes in all different shapes and sizes. It is the letting go of a friend that you outgrew. Telling you that you are not strong enough because you are not mirrored in her image. It is recognizing that the nuclear family that you thought was picture perfect, has now shattered into a million shards of glass, never to be picked up. In a system that revolves around two parents, a dog, and a white picket fence, when you don't have that by 32, you are a failure. It is recognizing that you have your own toxicity. Obsessiveness, trauma, and self-deprecation are a bitch. It is recognizing that you need to reach out to people for love. Unlearning the ways in which we have been dehumanized and recognizing that we deserve love. Loss is something that one does not get over in 5 stages, we experience it through

I had a conversation with a friend that I have not talked to in months, we had a falling the last time we spoke,  but something in me wanted to connect with her, so I did. She asked me if I came out to my parents and I said no. Immediately went ballistic and emphasized that you need to come out now. The two main reasons being that I needed to live as my true self and that you are stronger than this. First of all, whether I choose to be out to my family is not the soul-defining aspect of my strength second, Second. even as my true self, I am not actually free.  I live in a world where gender is so racialized, in binary, and so neatly boxed by colonization to where I am either worthy of my own violence or a spectacle.  We all wear masks every day, whether we go to work, school, the people that you romantically admire, the people who call you a nigger faggot in public and/or the family that we are born into, especially when going home for the holidays. It is a way

Imagine going into the Ivory tower An old beige, concrete and brick building That once was a pencil factory and now its a place where you go in, get information shoved down your throat for 18 months, and leave with the intention you will get a high paying job; whatever that means. As we spend more time in the ivory tower, the cracks  start to show, the gatekeepers take their positions, and imposters in all of us start to come out. I came in drained, I was isolated for two months in a toxic 1,088 sq ft house. Did not know if I could survive two weeks, let alone two years. I was expected to socialize all the time and to be present for everyone's bullshit around trying this new micro brewery here, a place that has $16 shrimp and grits there, or a that new place that charges $10 for a loaf of bread. Within these brick walls and white faces, it's isolating. Everyone was talking about mixed-use development and TOD (transit oriented development) as if they will help, tho