Heirloom Arts

One of my favorite places to spend time in town lately is my friends’ tattoo shop. It sounds weird. Most tattoo shops around here are edgy, dark places, but not Heirloom Arts. It’s bright and uplifting. I don’t know if it has to do with the fact that it’s the only queer femme owned shop […]

Social Media Monster: Matthew Berdyck

Several years ago, I used to write for a clickbait political blog. I hated it. Most of the writing I did was not really supportive of things I believed in. I was writing liberal opinion pieces designed to uplift certain politicians while denigrating others. It was the usual political stuff. I’ve just never been one […]

Making Dinner

I found my mama’s yogurt and shish barak recipes. She typed them out and emailed them to me years ago. I’m not gonna lie, I cried.   I make yogurt in my instant pot now, I’m currently making my second gallon now with a third gallon in process. The first was for the shish barak […]

Lines

I recently had to set a difficult boundary with my sister.We haven’t always got along. We are very different people with very different values and very different goals in life. I am very much pro vaccine, pro racial justice, and socially conscious. I love folk punk, Arabic pop music and Appalachian folk. I collect opossum […]

For My Former Friend

I find it so difficult to write for this blog some days. It’s not that I have nothing to say, just that there are only so many ways you can rephrase the words be kind for kindness’ sake. And really that is all I ever have to say.Yes, my life has conflict. Sometimes more than […]

My Name Is Aila

One of the most frustrating things about existing as a person of color in our society is the subtle ways in which you are not considered a person. I’m Arab. I’m Palestinian by way of Lebanon. I’m olive skinned, dark-haired, and I bellydance. I do a mean dabke. I wear a keffiyeh. I walk into […]