V. H. King's Ink

In late 2022, an MRI showed I had a brain tumor the size of a jumbo marshmallow smack in the middle of my head. The general consensus was that it had grown there slowly over the past decade—at least. Given certain diagnoses and symptoms I’d received and experienced over the years, this timeline made sense.

There are still questions I doubt I’ll get answers to. Did my pituitary gland ever develop normally if I’d had a tumor since I was 18? Does my body even know how to use its pituitary “the way it’s supposed to”? Can it be recalibrated, or is it always going to be off-kilter?

On top of that, there’s also the possibility that this tumor can come back. My labs would start looking weird, I would probably notice more changes in my joints and muscle structure, and we’d start the MRI merry-go-round all over again. A recurring tumor isn’t as haunting as other unanswered questions I have.

Why did it take eight years for any of my doctors to give a shit about what was happening? Why did they constantly blame me for not doing enough when my body was doing something that was quite literally out of my control? Would I still be as disabled as I am now if I hadn’t been dealing with this, or if someone would have listened to me sooner?

I am not afraid to cite my current state as a direct result of medical negligence, malpractice, and racism. Am I going to sue anyone over it? No. I have no interest in giving medical institutions more of my time, my body, my life.

Over the past two years, I have done something like an about-face. I always thought I would have a stable full-time job, something to pay the bills and provide the space for what I really wanted to do—tell stories, make art, build community and connect with others. Turns out that everything it took to get and keep a full-time job also ended up being the thing that disabled me to the point of not being able to work.

So, what now?

Yeah, I’ve asked myself that too.

I’m not going to pretend that this has been easy. The decade leading up to brain surgery was awful, and the two years since have been disheartening and discouraging in more ways than I wanted to relive. But I did live. Even when I wished I’d died in surgery. Even when my self-harm urges and suicidal ideation sky-rocketed. Even when the killing spree of Black and Brown bodies ramped up again and again. Even with this hellscape of a country in flames and shambles, I have lived.

I don’t always like it, but as my dad is quick to remind me, you don’t have to like it. You just have to keep going. Well, I’m not going in the same direction I used to. Most days, I don’t feel like I’m going in the same direction as anyone.

Disability has a way of siphoning you out of mainstream relevance. The pain levels, the brain fog, the communication barriers. Compounding realities of insufficient social support, forced poverty, food scarcity, housing insecurity. Our bodies, our minds, our capacity, is further ruined by everything it takes to climb the bureaucratic mountain of paperwork and appointments and applications and appeals processes—just to be denied. Again.

And then what?

The exhaustion is permanent, and so is the pain. Maybe the anger is too, for me. But so is my love of storytelling. So also is my belief in a great holy mystery, stretching through and across and beyond time. Evidence of compassion is as enduring as humanity’s commitment to violence.

The world will burn and burn and burn and beauty, miraculously, will bloom.

This is not a silver lining; it is the sword you hold by the blade. It is the pointed heart of a spade. It is the club fashioned from a trinity. It is secrets and death, keys and crossroads, hellhounds and immaculate insight.

When I originally planned LitMiH’s release, I called it the beginning. At the time, I had planned it to be the first in a series of art + poetry volumes reflecting on grief and small graces that feel like miracles in the moment. I did not anticipate the beginning that it would end up being, but I am keenly aware of it now. Publishing Late in the Midnight Hour required me to reintroduce my Black Self in all its mystery and fury.

The trajectory of this series (and indeed, my entire livelihood and the whole of my well-being) is up in the air—but where I’m writing from is not. I know myself in the same way I have always known myself. The difference now is how I choose to make space for myself.

How will I hold myself when all the world is midnight? How do I honor all that hurts and the ways I’ve healed, knowing those two things don’t cancel each other out? How do I uphold my values in how I go about my writing and art journey, even when every institution and social norm seeks to destroy me?

Whatever this world will do to destroy me, every punch pulls a thread of story out of me. I will die one day, and it will never be because of just one thing. There will be plenty of blame to go around. The same goes for the here and now. I am alive today, and there are a lot of things that keep me here. Chief among them—art, music, story, mystery, poetry. I stay for these, and I share them with you.

I make no predictions, as to how far my work will go. All I know is that it will not reach anyone, if I never write it, if I never paint it, if I never put it out there. I’m not the only one who feels like this. I’m not the only one who raises their voice. I don’t expect everyone to understand or appreciate it. I entrust my work to the mysteries of Spirit and ancestry, and I live.