Headfirst into Crosswinds
“I’d arrived to campus that first time wind-tattered, make-up smeared by an hour’s worth of sweat. My wrist ached from nursing the clutch around curves, hazard-level winds pushing me to the edge…”
“I’d arrived to campus that first time wind-tattered, make-up smeared by an hour’s worth of sweat. My wrist ached from nursing the clutch around curves, hazard-level winds pushing me to the edge…”
“He could see the highway in my eyes, the black-tar sinking like tidepools in the corners. I sagged into the couch and sighed into the steam…”
“I would walk, trash bags twisted onto my ankles to shield against snow melt, until I could rest against the bark, flick through songs, and watch as my breath drifted to the shivering leaves…”
“I heard it first before I saw it: a haphazard tapping, urgent as a whisper, against the window…”
“No one told me I was always meant to lose her. To this day, I wonder why they did it…”
An academic conference like AISES, by and for Native people, is going to weave threads of our Indigeneity into the way we meet, including drum circles, singers, dancers, and the wisdom of the elders.
“When those eyes flash from yards away, a sickly yellow, there is no time to breathe, to think…”
Moving into a new apartment in a new town, prepping for the start of a new quarter, can distract us from the seasons’ cycle.
“I shrank my life to a box so often it became normal. So, when I saw how the University of North Dakota hid entire boxes of artifacts, a small, strange part of me no longer felt alone…”
It isn’t merely that we have different ideas of how we should be living together, we have different perspectives on the very nature of reality.