What is a firefly that doesn’t flicker?
is it luz light
or is it darkness oscuridad
or is it darkness oscuridad
Que es una luciérnaga que no titila*?
A single firefly is a humble marvel of nature; witnessing a swarm of them can make you believe
magic
May 2018, flickering bioluminescence in a forest outside of Managua, while the city that raised me lit up with insurrection against a decrepit dictatorship. Students, retirees, feminists, farmers, LGBTQIA+, indigenous and afro-descendant communities, human rights activists, artists, merchants, environmentalists rose up simultaneously, self-convened through non-violent, creative forms of civic protest. We were met with violence, persecution and death from a political party and state that was once the vanguard against the dictatorship in power 40 years prior.
7 years later, Nicaraguan communities are left with multiple griefs: the loss of loved ones, futures, territories, and a new diaspora leaving the country en masse
How do we embody collective mourning with a social body fragmented by violence and displacement?
Como acuerpamos lutos colectivos con un cuerpo social fragmentado por la violencia y el desplazamiento?
how do we re-member collectively despite and through this violence and displacement,
and to struggles similar to ours?
7 years later, an insistence on the legacy of forms of resistance that diversified and proliferated, linking mourning and creativity between communities if for brief moments of fugitive resilience
como in-corporamos memoria colectivamente a pesar y a través de esta violencia y desplazamiento, y a luchas similares a las nuestras?
light
between
dark
In fireflies that don’t flicker a potential total darkness or total light
En luciérnagas que no titilan el potencial de luz total o total oscuridad
In honour of those who remain, those who have had to leave, and those who live on in collective memory
Both respite and an ethics of resistance:
the light that breaks through the vent in the windowless 6x4m cell / a sun clock in a prison / a barely perceptible yet orienting thread of light to know a day from another / with songs sung to keep voice, songs tyrants fear, songs chanted ululated whispered / speak, this little time is plenty / speak your mourning into being / fight your mourning into being / harder when The compass of mourning on uneven-ed territory is forced to point North / or a supposed Left / West / your upright body is yours / walked circles to walk miles on this earth, despite the cell, to make life worth living / humility and pride in finitude / of body and tongue / every exhausted sunrise a battle won / an earnest cry substitutes the morning coffee / in every generation a tremor to fissure through // resistance is and always was a hopeful pathology: defiant grievances / until the [sunrise is recovered to commence the work of] mourning / to dawn
© 2025