Mexican Dahlia: Ancestry in Bloom honors the parts of myself shaped by migration, silence, grief, ceremony, rupture, and return. The dahlia is not simply an emblem. It is a living bloom of memory, rooted and reaching at once.
nae vallejo Archive
Access is not optional
The poem is not an indictment but an invitation. It calls nonprofits and creative institutions to reimagine access not as a logistical hurdle but as a foundation for justice.
The staying kind: Storytelling as a tool for reconnection and repair
I have watched stories that were sacred to someone become a branding tool for someone else. We deserve a different relationship to story, one that moves us toward repair instead of extraction.
Becoming the desert’s memory
Becoming the Desert’s Memory reflects the endurance, wisdom, and adaptive beauty of disabled, Black, Native, and of color bodies – how we grow, re-member, and make meaning within conditions not meant for our thriving.