

Sometimes, people will paint you in a way that makes their own self hatred suffer less. I choose to rise above. I choose to wear this soft strength like a flower crown. I choose to be at home with the idea of standing alone.
I choose calm.
Self portrait. 9/21/18

As for you girls, you must risk everything for Freedom, and give everything for Passion, loving everything that your hearts and your bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a young woman than her freedom and her passion should be her desire to make her life into poetry, surrendering everything she has to create a life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in her imagination. – Roman Payne
With Keira Grant (October 2015, Oakland, CA)