tiktok is glitching - fuck ice

I wrote this poem months ago about censorship, and it feels like an important time to revisit it. I've been engaging with a lot of anti-ICE content, and my socials have started glitching. Videos will stop halfway through or just not play at all. I don't think this is a coincidence. People are using AI to edit victims' faces, making them look messier and scarier. Videos sharing the violent, racist, and exponential chaos in the states are being taken down or altered. There is a major difference between what we are shown and what is true. People are dead and dying. Queer people, black people, white people, there is no identity that is safe anymore. Compassion for pregnant women, single parents, children - anyone vulnerable has vanished. Fact-check your sources. Be wary of distractions. Be alert. Keep talking.

i hear him tell me to “mind the gap" 

as if the gap wasn't mine 

crackling and barking from an ancient intercom 

repeating himself every time 

i pay for my ticket and pay mind to the gap 

and imagine myself slipping through 

then the darkness numbs my pressure points 

and i imitate a version of you 

every piece of it is fake, so never mind the gap 

the danger lies in the platforms beside 

every mouth spits a warning - it yells and it scolds 

and the only way out is inside 

i suck in my gut and slip into the gap 

scraping my palms on the way down 

then my blood turns to spit, and the spit into water 

and for only ten minutes i drown 

i fill up my lungs 

was it water or air?

either way it felt crystal clear 

then my vision adjusted, my ears finally popped 

and i knew that the bottom was near 

the cries that i heard, the rib cages crushed 

like alcohol in a fresh wound 

reality stings and the truth disinfects 

but by minding the gap you're immune