Recently, despite several complaints, I was loped into a conversation about God, a conversation I haven’t had in years and one I most definitely did not want to have in that moment. Re-entering that space was like revisiting a once familiar language and being stumped by verb conjugations and syntactical structures that once felt so familiar.

Religion and I have a very odd relationship.
My father’s a religious fanatic. His fanaticism destroyed everything it touched, it destroyed his chance at making a successful career out of a skill he’d honed for years, it destroyed his marriage and it tore through our family like an Egyptian plague.

I remember the night I got baptised like it was yesterday. I was wearing a pink shirt and my hair looked a mess.
But more than that, I remember the day I decided to give my life to the Lord. I remember exactly where I was, under a tent on the lawns...

Kamili
August 26, 2017
2pm

Jesus be a swift, strong breeze. Amen.
The dead weight of the sweat on my body was making it harder and harder to walk and Raine and Zoe were walking entirely too fast. Going through life as a short person and walking with tall people was a journey of perpetual disrespect. Why dem doe slow dung? On top of all of that, the stares of men leaning against the colourful and peeling paint of wholesales planted themselves on my ass like handprints. All of this madness before midday.

Nowhere in Jamaica makes me feel more non-native than Downtown Kingston. As much as I love here, I really think I’d love it more sans the people. The people create a tight ball of anxiety, anger and fear to settle right on my chest. Strange, since I was born, raised and almost destined to die a few minutes from Coronation Market.

Sometimes when I’m walking through I just watch. I...

Jamaicans are great people, says the Jamaican. I’ll admit, I’m biased.

Jamaicans are also not so pleasant people. In my very short time on this earth, I have had the great pleasure of working with, interacting with and even living with people from whole heap a different countries. Working among Jamaicans has, to date, been my most unpleasant experience.

Objects in life react strangely when in contact with other objects. Iron expands when it comes in contact with heat, for example. I scream when strange men talk to me, another example. Jamaicans become insufferable when given a status, the example relevant to this blog post.

This status could present itself in the form of being put in charge of a small group of people, given a security uniform and told to guard 3 floors of a run down apartment building, a Dr or Prof or even a Mrs. before a last name, or a few extra dollars on a pay...

I still remember the first day I realized my parents were just humans.

They weren’t super humans or alpha adults. They were regular, but somehow being parents knighted them with a world of responsibility. They weren’t perfect beings and they weren’t always right and they had doubts, this I know now, but there was a point where everything pointed to the contrary.

My parents, in my head, were the unshakable of the unshakable. I always counted on my mum to make things happen. Every dream of mine that I’ve dropped at her feet has come true. God was 5”10 with eyes like mine and shiny black hair. God had stubby little fingers and a cute button nose and an amazing laugh. God was my mother.
A human but also magic.

Sometimes, God was my father. A slip of a man with a loud, booming voice. He was a chatterbox, a storyteller, maker of the world’s best fried dumplings and somehow I could...

Zara

11:40pm
November 5, 1993. Kingston, Jamaica.

My mind was a tenament yaad. Thoughts from my cousin’s brother’s girlfriend cock up right above my temple, chewing bubbalicious and braiding Anna-kay’s hair.

Memba to check pon di loan ting

Other thoughts straggled around the edges like family members weh kotch up a people yaad fi just coupledayscouplemonthscoupleyears - couple seconds too long.

Can take the girl out di ghetto but cya take the ghetto out the girl.

Some thoughts reminded me of mommy’s 16th boyfriend. Bouncing around, touching places he shouldn’t touch. Polluting soft, safe spaces.

Today’s thought tasted like bitter, undercooked callaloo.

Your son is all your demons come to life.

I dared a look at Jonathan. The bottom of the van was clunking along the potholes even louder than usual. His beloved MP didn’t fix the road. He was driving too fast. Now was not the...

so you think that by getting close to all the girls he’s fucked,
you’ll somehow get closer to him?
that in collecting all the little pieces of himself,
the ones he scattered in other women,
he’ll somehow feel complete to you?
feel less distant?
less absent?

you’ll only feel more familiar to him.
he’ll love that.
he’ll love that you made yourself into a home of his past favourites.
into a mosaic of everything he’s ever touched.
he’ll make a home out of you.
have you changing all the colours
and all the cushions
only to leave you with peeling paint
and sunken footprints on your carpets.
just another pit stop for somebody else trying desperately to love him

Janine
11:45pm.
November 5, 1993. Kingston, Jamaica.

Potholes in this country were a problem we didn’t talk about enough. All I can think about are potholes. Potholes were safe. Safer than thinking about how much I was bleeding.
Mama always use to seh I change the topic and think about some fooli-nish instead of concentrating on the very serious. She called it “avoiding”. The church therapist called it focusing on the inane to avoid thinking about the serious. I called it surviving, safety.

“Sweetheart, remember what we spoke about. Think about this very carefully.”
Scary how nice and proper threats could sound.
“Janine, it would be best if you didn’t tell anybody about this. You’re a very sweet girl, but if this goes to court, you’d never win and I’m sure you don’t want to put your parents under the pressure of having to pay for lawyers. Just let us handle this, okay?”

All thinly...

Thandy

11:30pm.
November 5, 1993. Kingston, Jamaica.

Generations supposed to ah start now. Why this woman walking suh blinking fast?

“I’m Nurse Smith but you can call me Smitty. Mi nah memba yuh name so nuh bother tell me. Welcome to the emergency room. You going to see whole heap a blood and hear a bagga noise. Most times it nuh dat serious. Govament pay yuh fi pretend seh it serious. Earn yuh keep.”

Blood and screaming. I should be in bed. Watching Generations on the tv before Mama woke up and wanted to watch Love tv.

There was one thing I always noticed about emergency rooms; the lack of urgency. It was actually the only place in the world I’d ever been where time moved slower than it was supposed to. A suspended hell.
People sat in the long rows of wooden benches with blood pooling around them, helpless, worried and concerned friends or family standing by fanning them with...

Dear Corporate Jamaica,

Jamaica.
-Island
-Caribbean
-Bob Marley

-Black People.

Yes, black people
We (about 97 percent or suh of us) are partially or fully black. Why do you insist that we wear another ethnicity to work every day?

Do you look in the mirror and hate your reflection? Do you look at your kinky hair, unwashed face, and your very afrocentric features in the morning and feel the urge to vomit? Is your skin such a burden that you have to wash it all off every morning?
Do you wake up each morning and read from a bible of outdated Eurocentric standards?

I do not.
Cannot relate.
I have walked into banks in Paris and offices of tourism in European countries (you know, the countries we still roll over backwards to appease) and met upon employees whose feet were adorned in crocs, whose hair was dyed pink, whose upper lips were pierced and received better customer service than...