Moratorium on Love

Written By Pink Flowers

I’d like to request a moratorium on love. Love has been as co-opted as Christmas. Love is a De Beers campaign. It’s Beyonce swervin' on that wood. Love is never having to say you're sorry. It’s the Defense of Marriage Act. It’s apparently all you need, if you're a billionaire recording artist. Instead of using the word love it would be amazing if people just said what they meant. I would prefer to hear “I really like having sex with you” or “kindly, solve my problems, please” or “I really need you to just listen right now” or even “My ass is broke and I really need someone in my life who can occasionally slide me some cash.”

It would be extra awesome to hear “I believe I can accomplish more working in community with others. I believe I do better when I feel supported. Would you be willing, for the time being, to enter into a relationship of mutual support? That support would include physical and emotional intimacy; picking up slack when one of us might be incapacitated, but not beyond what is reasonable for the well-being of the other; and engaging in mutually rewarding and life-enriching activities. We could share hobbies, enjoy entertainment and travel. We would also need to agree to accept and honor each other's personal boundaries, understanding that those boundaries may shift as you and I both grow as emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual beings.”

Pink Flowers

Pink Flowers is a Black trans artist, peacemaker, educator, and pleasure activist whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, governance, and cultural transformation. Trained in Theater of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, and Navajo-informed Peacemaking practices, Pink designs spaces where conflict can be addressed, power can be examined, and joy can be reclaimed.

Her artistic and pedagogical practice draws from African trickster cosmology, Brazilian Joker traditions, shamanic ritual, and cooperative economics. She is the founder of the award-winning Falconworks Theater Company (2005–2021), which used popular theater to build civic capacity and participatory leadership in historically marginalized communities.

Pink served for over five years as a trained Peacemaker in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, facilitating restorative processes within the New York City court system. From 2015–2018, she worked in cooperative business development with the Center for Family Life, supporting worker-owned enterprises in immigrant communities.

She currently serves as Director of Education and Training for the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, where she leads leadership development and conflict engagement initiatives. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Stretch Festival in Berlin and the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

Across ritual, performance, mediation, and institutional design, Pink’s work asks a central question:

What becomes possible when we refuse shame and choose conscious power instead?

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