“Thank you to my woes, dear friends, beloveds, and lovers, who have walked toward pleasure with me, refusing to settle.” -adrienne maree brown, “gratitude,” Pleasure Activism (on the page another book might call “Acknowledgements”)

                “What a difference a community makes.” -Shelley Parker-Chan, “Acknowledgements,” He Who Drowned the World

                “I am always reaching for your fingers.” -Joshua Whitehead, “Acknowledgements,” Making Love with the Land

                I’m working on draft twenty-nine of my novel — a draft I’ll send to publishers — and today in the shower I was writing an acknowledgements page. There are so many people who carried water to grow this book. Whose questions inspired these characters. Whose laughter lives in their voices. My voices. Our voices, I hope.
                I think something like an acknowledgements page — that act of gratitude — is a lovely exercise for more than just books. A naming, incomplete, more loving gesture than polished list, of the communities I’m part of. When I started writing this post, I thought I might include a fragment of my list, but I realize that’s not what this post is about. This is about how adrienne maree brown, Shelley Parker-Chan, and Joshua Whitehead all invite me toward practices of connection. This is about how I’ll lie in bed tonight, drifting through some of the interwoven moments and interactions and relationships that are the music I sing with. One friend’s poetry. A game played with friends some ten years ago. A rock I picked up on the beach. My siblings, one of whom I’m about to pick up from the train station. It’s lovely to make space to focus on these relationships, and think how they interact. It’s lovely to feel that space all through me.