music
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I don’t live in the safest part of town. my neighborhood is one of those zip codes that lead the city in serious crimes. people here often feel hemmed in by violence, always scanning for a way out. and I get it. just yesterday, in the shadow of the elevated train tracks, I saw a…
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sometimes people ask me what my songs are about. I usually say something vague —the city, life stuff, you know? — because the real answer feels too tangled to unwrap in small talk. the truth is, they’re personal. not metaphorical or abstract. they’re about Brooklyn. about skateboarding past street corners where dealers post up. about…
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last night, my mom went to her high school reunion. she stood in front of the mirror, adjusting the straps of her dress, tilting her head the way she does when she’s deciding if she still belongs in a room she hasn’t yet entered. she does. she always has. her Spanish beauty, unchanged. the same…
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last night I sat cross-legged on the floor of the small Brooklyn apartment where I live with mom and abuela, guitar in my lap, a song in my head I haven’t finished yet. outside, the city hummed its usual lullaby — sirens, wind, someone yelling too far away to understand. inside, just me, chasing chords…
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in group the other day, we were doing this mindfulness practice — focusing on an object or scene, really letting yourself see it, the texture, the light, and edges. the quiet stuff your brain skips past most days. someone pointed out a single cloud moving past the window. we all looked. then a man, maybe…
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some places feel like they know how to hold loneliness — not fix it, just hold it. bliNK came from a walk I took through one of my go-to parks, late in the day, sky bruised with light. the park sits high on a hill, with quiet paths and a wide view of the New…
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I read this in a book I checked out of the library: out of all the stations on the New York City Subway, 275 are fully underground. that’s 59%. add a couple more percent and you get 61% riding beneath the surface. the rest — elevated, embanked, open-cut — see sky. but most of us…
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I was in Walmart the other night, where the floor tiles are always kind of sticky and the lights make you look like you haven’t slept in days, grabbing Oreos and a half gallon of milk. the air smelled like popcorn, rubber flip-flops, and Subway bread. somebody was arguing with the self-checkout. carts squeaking, price…
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four days a week. almost every week this year. I’ve added up the minutes — over 3,000 of them so far — in the recovery support group, in the chair across from my therapist, in the waiting room at the clinic with its flickering light, the hum of an old vending machine, and an odd…
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recently, abuela says her body is shrinking. day by day, inch by inch. she claims she is now the size of a matchstick, a whisper, a breath between words. she laughs when she says it, but I see her pressing her palms together, measuring the space she still takes up in this world. one day,…
cookie nieves 