Ms Kerry Graham

Good morning.

Oh god bless my Sunday-July-26th-heart. Baby girl had no idea what fresh hell the next three days would bring.

“More a part of an everyday that doesn’t require so much effort” hahahahahah I just went to court for the third time and paid money I don’t have to involve the legal system AGAIN in getting my next door neighbor to please stop talking to me.

Yep, smooth ass sailing over here.

I’m adept at making meaning and finding joy and practicing gratitude in a life that, in some ways, I’ve carefully crafted and in others, I’ve had not an ounce of say about. I’m (very) proud of who I am and what I’ve achieved and how I carry myself. And, on days like today, I wish I felt better understood, less alone, and more a part of an everyday that doesn’t require so much effort.

If tomorrow isn’t better, it’s likely that one day soon will be; I’m saying this tonight, though, because sometimes I just appreciate being witnessed as I process and continue, always, to try.

My public library has ✨absolutely✨ helped make my summer a happy one—anyone else?

White people: we are responsible for this.

We need to talk to the white men and the white boys we all know—not just once, but again and again and again—about how fu***ng significant even the smallest s**t is, how much it matters to laugh at the jokes and overlook the aggression and just stay quiet when their friends/colleagues/teammates take things too far this time. The small things add up because they aren’t fu***ng addressed, let alone held to account, and, when we hear about the truly horrific s**t, we only focus on the outcome of allllllllllllll those small things that added up—not the moments we, or someone we know, let things head toward the violence that didn’t have to, and shouldn’t have, happened.

White people need to talk. And white men and white boys need to—absolutely must—listen.

The short version of My Life Story Lately is: I viscerally feel, as deep as in my bones, healthy. Happy. Whole.

For more than 10 years, Baltimore’s Youth Poet Laureate Competition has empowered young people to speak their truth On a rainy Saturday afternoon at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse in late April, bustling with people eating, working, and socializing, Marcellus Vinson is talking about prescription drugs and prisons to a rapt audience.  As Vinson closes the poem to a raucous applause, a woman from the audience,...