An abolitionist zine for and by adopted, fostered, and trafficked people.

This zine is an invitation for folks directly impacted by systems of family regulation, surveillance, and policing to gather our creative expressions and to know one another. In thinking about abolition we desire to be in relationship with, and draw connection to, other abolitionist and liberation movements.

The only theme is abolition.

I got me some birthday blues. Blues like sorrow. Blues like swimming pool. Blues like not swimming in a pool. Blues like drowning. Blues like lost at sea. Like sea. Like m/other memory don’t you know that every birthday I pass through takes me farther from you? From us?

My parents took what they had, a child that wasn’t born theirs, and in the act of renaming, tied me into a community they did not want me to forget. Some may call that love. Others, ownership. I’m not going to say my parents were wrong when they took the chance of adoption to speak prophecy over a life that was already routed. I’m just going to say that I was right when I, in an act of sovereignty over self, wrapped around what they called me and what I called myself. Both.

This weekend I found myself watching softball and nursing heartbreak at a gay bar. I guess I looked sad or drunk and truthfully I was only one of the two but an older Black woman approached me and asked if I was straight. We both knew I wasn’t and we both knew what she meant. I could barely speak through the grief but she understood. She asked who I lost and I said you.

It is an extraordinary thing to be held so tightly in this life that you know love will reach you anywhere. It is also a wonderful grace to be held loosely enough to have room to grow. My life has been full of those that have done both and I cannot give enough thanks to you who have been my embrace.

I thought I had more time to say goodbye. So I wrote and addressed this to Sheila Roberts-Veatch to read while she was alive. I wish we had more years and I am profoundly thankful for the ones we had. Since she died before this could reach her, I am making this public.

why do we plan our own funerals on our tongues

while we elevate them beyond

this / reality

is monsters don’t die / like humans.

cannot be held accountable for their sins

I was… before this. My story did not start with erasure of establishment in community. I had another name before this one. One I no longer respond to for it belongs to a baby that did not travel down the path her name laid out for her.

I did not want to write this. I did not want this to be about you. In fact, the next piece I envisioned about you was a love letter and an homage to this that we created(past tense, now). I wanted a memorial for our love and a statement of triumph. But I don’t know how we overcome this when your whiteness asks for my disappearance.

There are no new thoughts here. Just new layers to this heartbreak.

Just family that would rather say they just don’t understand or have time to understand the “black-white thing” but they love me regardless before using me as a reason why they simply can’t be racist.

I think they simply did not understand that me coming out was not me moving away from God, holiness, myself, or freedom but I was moving into love. All encompassing, uncontainable love. And I am the only one who knows all the intimacies of my faith. No one can define that for me. Thank the Lord for that.

On my hand were five stories of love in my life I had written before I arrived so I would remember why I voted and who I voted for. On my hand was a lifeline, not only back to me, but toward the best of humanity that I wanted to fight to keep.

I had shown up to hold witness to this moment and the lives around me. The atmosphere was electrifying.

My pain psychologist and I talk through my hurt and discuss how healing needs to be a part of my story. We discuss how healing is not linear and is what we make it.

It has been over 150 days, and we are still demanding justice for the murder of Breonna Taylor. Each passing day is a reinforcement to the rest of us that we can also be killed by the state and our lives don’t matter enough for accountability to be shown.

I am the girl Crystal Dunn of the USWNT met at the airport. It was Dulles Airport in Virginia. I am 19 now, and meeting her changed my life.