Hey Kin,
The votes are in. The silence has been broken.
Out of — 425 — cast, you chose the line that demanded to be heard:
“A lover teaches me that hunger is not failure, that appetite is not shame, that wanting more is not evidence of greed but evidence of being alive. He places food in my hand like sacrament, waits for me to taste without apology, shows me that eating is another way of saying: I intend to stay.”
The winning essay: A Lover Teaches Me to Eat With My Hands.
This one is about me. Not theory at a distance—I am bringing all of me to the table. Hunger, history, shame, desire. The body as site of refusal, the body as proof of survival. It is a lesson in intimacy and appetite, in learning that to want is not sin but testament, that to eat without apology is to say: I intend to live.
Section IV: Our Living is Theory
These essays live in the flesh. They ask what it means to inherit a body already read before you speak, to love through appetites taught to shrink, to survive what was meant to erase you, to hold your ground when the world demands your disappearance.
This section is about bodies as battleground and homeland, about the intelligence that lives in skin and bone, about the miracle of still being here when every force conspired otherwise.
Seven essays, the body made text:
Theory of Touch
Notes Toward a Black Queer Communion
A Lover Teaches Me to Eat With My Hands (your choice, releases 9/20)
Body Theory
What They Thought Would Kill Me Made Me Write This
Aftercare
The Night I Didn’t Flinch
Six remain in the archive, waiting for those ready to witness them.
This is only the fourth breath.
KINFOLK continues.
For those watching from outside: become a paid subscriber to read every essay, access the growing archive, and witness this collection being built breath by breath. This is how we keep the work alive.
Mid-October: Section V opens—Folk Like Us.
Excellent work!
Whoa! Cannot wait to read all of these!