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I went to Brooklyn this weekend, to see my college nonboyfriend. This was significant. We slept in the same bed, side by side, but barely touched. This was also significant.

I saw the guy tonight, on my return from Brooklyn. We talked about my race discrimination case from this summer (the first case I wrote). He took my hands into his and said I'm so proud of you--so sweetly, so earnestly, and it was supremely (if strangely and narcissistically?) validating. Perhaps because he really heard what I had to say, because in contrast to just about everyone else I've told about this case, it was obvious that it meant something to him, that it mattered, that it was not just a coup for me, but it was personally significant to him, because he saw me in that moment, and acknowledged that yes, I am white, but I am really in the struggle.

And when he pulled me near to him and uttered those words, I burst into tears, and wept, inconsolable, like a spoiled child.

There are things I've tried to learn by reading, things I've intellectually understood but never really felt. And now I am learning things from him, things that books could never teach me, that simple rhetoric has never taught me. Things that are essential but invisible; inscribed in my heart and written on my body.