Coraline Ismael Karim

We each deserve the right to smile, to dance beneath the blazing sun, jumping through cold water sprinklers over muddied grass. It is our right as thinking beings to be granted moments of peace and serenity when many in power grit their teeth at even the thought of those in labor and service resting longer than the time given. Today, I was enamored in happiness. I rode my bicycle to Bikemore's Bikepacking 101 Workshop early in the morn, beads of sweat falling onto my black camisole, shrunken gym shorts I wore riding up into my nethers. Still, even in my lackluster appearance, I found joy in going to the presentation. To me, riding a bicycle is like sipping the creamiest drizzle of opium. It is like inhaling a long puff of marijuana, of herbal dopamine. While the event itself was concluding the wonders of bicycling through forests and bear land, I was smiling, giddy, even, in the fact that I had just biked thirty long and heat-filled and sun-shined minutes to an event where likeminded bike-lovers were, too.

A member of my bicycling escapades, of my "bike fam"--or so I like to call them--was there, too. Out of respect for his identity, and my clearly radical politics potentially troubling his professional life, I will refer to him as WOW. WOW planned on going to both the Mt. Vernon Flower Mart and the American Visionary Art Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race around Baltimore City. I'll be honest: the day was sublime. We rode through the mart, speaking to non-profits and pottery-artists and flower-lovers alike. I ate a $20 Indian food combo, the server recognizing me from the day before, his kind voice and bright eyes a welcome sight from any person. We then rode to Patterson Park and met up with my two Anime friends D & M, clapping and laughing along to each of the brilliantly defined and sculpted kinetic art riding through the trails. No matter how much the sun sunk into my body, exhausting every fiber of my being, I could not help but cheer with all the other smiling faces within the event. It was a dream. It was a reminder of the love people have, the love of creation and each other. A variety of persons were here, and each of them were held in the splendor riding before us. Gods. Today was a lovely day. We each deserve that moment. To be held within a lovely day, with each other, in love and in care.

A bird died in my hands today. It was a small, helpless creature I found on the sidewalk walking my dog, a sidewalk I rarely ever walk him over. I needed to take a detour, the original sidewalk meters ahead of me sporting a dogwalker who seemed all too comfortable with her world. Its feathers were brown-spotted, its breathing frantic, and its toes---I feel remise calling them talons---were splayed outwards. It looked paralyzed. Its beak was planted on the warm cement ground, hidden beneath the shade of the giant tree's canopy above us. Its body was arched upwards, like it had been trying so badly to lift itself without success. I couldn't feel its warmth. If anything, the lingering heat surrounding us was the warmth I felt, yet this bird felt like nothing. It was helpless, and I felt useless in my inability to heal anything. I stroked its spine, expecting the worse, hoping for the best. I asked it to fly, to find something to push it forward, but my words, English and indiscernible to their minds, did nothing. I felt like a child again, in her dreams wishing for a better world. I don't know how the babe got in such a position to die, how something that flies and sings beneath the blue sky it calls home was struck down to this pitiful cement sidewalk. A granular sidewalk, hard and unnerving to my bare flesh when I knelt down to comfort its last breath. My dog, a natural idiot, mistook it as food, the smell of death and rot and garbage parallel to his kibble dinner. That says a lot of the kibble dinner he eats. He held the bird in his mouth for just a second, less than one I'd hope, before I screamed for him to drop it. It happened so quickly, his jaw snapping over the babe, his simultaneous release of it, and the bird's beak was wide and open, silently screaming, its bosom heaving even more than before. We're in a gentrified residential neighborhood and no one is around us on this Friday morning. It's alive, but I believe its heart gave out after witnessing the darkness of a giant's maw. I was furious at the attempt by my dog, its idiocy and canine senses colluding all too successfully. It died in my hands, its breathing becoming smoother, slower, mute. Birds just like it sang around us. They flew past our faces and its black-beady eyes were still. It didn't feel right to leave it on the sidewalk, a place where giants crush the worlds hidden between the cracks. So, I rested the babe in a flowerbed beside us, tried my best to close its eyes without damaging it anymore than my dog did, and left.

Yesterday was May Day, and I marched for Palestine in Baltimore. I didn't feel it necessary to cover myself, my tattoos and facade all exposed, though it was mostly because I felt it unnecessary at this point. I'm already unemployed, my personal information has long been exposed by all avenues becauses of our big brother government, and I feel like the need to "cover yourself" and your entirety, to abscond any edifice of your person, is heavily predisposed by white privilege. It is white people who ultimately have the choice to hide their beliefs and what they wear to discern their ideals. I can't do that. I'm already brown-skinned, opinionated, trans, fat. I have discernible features, unlike most white people who are quite similar in taste and physicality. My comrade, of who she prefers to be unnamed (a pattern, you'll see), is of the demographic who identifies with the marginalized. Yet, her white skin trumps over any sort of marginalization. White skin is one's prime safety. She participated in the march fully covered, her keffiyeh wrapped around her skull so only her eyes showed bits of excitement or draw. She pointed out my self-exposure. I told her she looks like every white person currently within the march. She wasn't the most in danger, Palestinians and people of color were. Yet, she felt the need to hide her visage as much as possible. She has no tattoos, no discernible features, and is blonde with rich parents. There is a pattern, you see, in the psyche of the privilege. Give them the flavor of oppression, and they see themselves as the ultimate martyrs.