This past weekend a friend, Lorenzo Diggins Jr., celebrated the release of the fourth issue of Find Peace. Keep Peace., one of his many self-published creative visions. I believe Lorenzo’s depth of thought and intention is what makes each issue feel like a masterpiece and I use the word, “feel” with specific purpose. Words, and language have always had a way of holding me. In my adolescence, my nose remained buried in a book because the words allowed me to nestle into a space and a world that took me outside of the one I lived in. Raised in a predominately white environment, the world outside of my home, was a world that didn’t care much for me and so, at an incredibly young age I was tasked with the responsibility of learning to care, mostly emotionally, for myself. This is not to say that I did not receive care, and love, from my family, and a small but very mighty community of individuals outside of them, but there was an internal care that was necessary to meet needs which, at such a young age, I had neither the language or level of self-awareness to name, or communicate. Reading was both an escape, and home place, and writing offered me a space to mull over thoughts, questions, and feelings, and express, to myself, for myself, the often inexpressible. Fast forward to the present and I still find words and language to be a place within which I can feel, fill, and be held.