June 20 2016
Melbourne, Australia

Mostly it’s about cannibals, Frankenstein and no manaakitanga.

Bill’s house is up high on a hill, you go there with Teju Cole and play Jay Electronica. Black sand, black men, black love. We make friends with other indigenous women. Give each other shit. Crack up at nothing in particular. This is the promise of coloured sisters, we make bridges with our bare hands, we step over ourselves to meet each other in the space between. The va.

All of this on the wind while we try to find Chinatown, conflicted as to whether that’s okay, is it okay for us to say Chinatown?

Coco Solid speaks with her whole body. She tells the room full of girls, turbo, fucking turbo! That’s us, not answering questions. That’s us, sort of navigating a new room into the one we’re actually sitting in, into the panel we’re here to dress in flesh and bone with our own sorry stories. Only we aren’t sorry. I’m not sorry to be outspoken and undone. Jess isn’t sorry at all.

Speaking in answers, speaking in the past tense, drowning the present with velvety verse. I think my cheeks are flushed. My face feels hot.

My keynote was packed out this afternoon. Plenty of women of colour. Plenty of queer women.

Jess knows a really good dumpling house. We navigate the streets with loose truth, this is sort of how the buildings looked, she muses, kind of… trying to think back to the last time she was here.

I’ve seen blue and pink dumplings in a travel magazine hyping Melbourne, I ask if that’s where we’re going, I don’t know – maybe? Her fringe shifts in the breeze, and there’s the glitter within, eyes full of souls.