Yasmine Tadross

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