“My child asks after my Tante, about death, about what

happens to bodies when we go, about what happens to

minds. I have few answers for her, but I do have this:

we go to ground. I watch as she lays in what she calls

“the grassy place” near our home and wonder what she

imagines of her body’s relation to soil, of her thinking

self ’s kinship to the vibrant ecologies beneath her, of the

ground that greets her now and one day will again. Going

to ground can happen in so many ways—mostly invol-

untarily, defined by both individual and population level

scales of injury, collective debilitation (Puar), and hands

forced, with earth-swallowing imagined as punishment

rather than prize…”

The original talk, opening Loophole of Retreat, Venice 2022 (Simone Leigh + Rashida Bumbray, curators). Published in Loophole of Retreat: the Book, Pacific Books 2026.