Who's house?

I've dated before. I've raised my girls in the safety of being, at home. Keeping men at bay was easy. Letting them in isn't. Men have no authority in the house that I built. Women feel free in my space. Men are merely useful visitors. Single parenting doesn't get a do over. What happens when the worlds collide? What happens when the princess questions her authority, because a suitor addressed his fraility at her expense? What happens when the suitor fails to read her discomfort while persuing the Queen? 

Choice makes this scenario seem as easy as learning hopscotch. Public dating hasn't been my M.O. for over 10 years. The last 2 times were tragic. Both men have other children. Mine were younger. I learned how they parented girls. It was almost aligned with how I did things. Only one lived with me. It was brief. He never made them feel ashamed of thier bodies. The other has different standards. His daughter lived with him. He provided for her. She wore whatever she wanted. I never paid too much attention to what she wore, at home. I didn't care.

Without the gaze of patriarchy, how can I teach my child women aren't as free as they seem. Sometimes, we make choices to keep all of safe in the long run. Sometimes, our greater need for support makes us look at suitors for a how, not a why. I used to balk at a man telling me to put clothes on. I thought it was controlling. I didn't understand my role. 

I didn't explain to the suitor how I ran my queendom. He feels like he can treat the princesses like others. This looks like favoritism. It looks creepy. It doesn't look like he truly likes them. I didn't see it. I have concurrent agreements about safety. They don't talk to each other.

I feel horrible. My child doesn't feel supported. The suitor will feel defensibly defeated. He won't know what to do. Thing is, I don't plan to stop seeing him. 

Toryland Beach

 There are moments where trauma doesn't begin or end. It just layers on the veins embedded in our rocks, our traumas. Gravel is the uncomfortable pebbling the path. Veining if is faint. Nonetheless, the trauma is showing.

    Are we the rocks? Therapists tell us that trauma happens to us. It changes our brains. What if we didn't know, bc trauma whipped our ancestors so badly, it showed up 4 generations down the line. What do we feel like? Are chips? Are we tumbled smooth? Are we light catchers? Which parts of sparkle? 

    What if you got your spark from trauma? Poverty dictates. It creates stories that socialize around lack. Basic needs are a party. Funerals are fish fries. Building fund is a few hands of poker. Prom was baking pies for the community. Lack forces you to see the world for what it gives not how you work with it. It demands you learn early and young to play with rocks.

    My middle daughter has always carried around rocks. I've never grasped her fascination. Hidden in patches of grass or barely missing from the driveway, she collected them. Currently, she has around 11 tucked into a pouch. They go with her everywhere. She saw things in those rocks that others take for granted. 

    I grew up on a gravel drive. When my mother bought her first home, it didn't have gravel. Over time, the compacted red clay gave way under Buicks and Chevys. At my grandmother's house, the putrid green walnut hull hugged the gravel every fall. My grandmother drove over them. I'd find the nuts. Little did I know, I was allergic. I could walk on rocks.

    I couldn't undo the trauma. I'd seen the affects. I didn't know. Words can't speak in silence. They can fill up intentional emptiness. All the rocks in the world aren't as big as Cancer.

Paper

I've spent more than enough moments begging. My performative presence decries how the need to weep is louder than the crying. My tears are reclusive, muffled, shut up in my bones and bedsheets. I've learned how to wear the mask. Dunbar had no idea his poetry was a reckoning for a future that included me. He just wrote how to survive. Fixing my face will not fix flagrancy. Silence still doesn't teach. To master that much self control is to deny the self you are showing up for. Explanations. Excuses. Who are we without the words to justify either our existence or erasure? Does my audacity unnerve you? Angelou been telling me, all my life, how gifts, talents, and craft all run through my veins. Black writers taught me about talent. The raw ingenuity to learn illegally and make a profit. Black writers gave me gifts that no Hallmark card could. I am their imagination. They see me as a niece, grandchild, or cousin. I am family in ways that are intentional and crafted. I am not the craft. I am not an expository on how or why. I am. My creativity rummages pages of words desperate for the essences. The tools only enhance. They do not define me. I am bigger than the leisure and wealth assumed to support art. My face still twitches and tires. My eyes wander. I'm looking for greatness where mediocrity is the means. And, it's very mean, very angry, very indignant. Hansberry knew being young, gifted and Black was dangerous. How many paper cuts come with being Grown, gifted, and Black? Should I beg the system to redesign itself, so hurting isn't the greatest vehicle? That's too much like right. I am not at war with what I cannot be. Begging won't bring me peace. 

A Raisin

 I have an angst, an angry dangling carrot, rotting in my pocket. Why carry seepy stench? Why be putrid and petrified? My power is gunpowder. Black girl Magic is a shotgun. Womanism is the bullet. My target is closer than the length of the barrel. She became the friends I thought loved me, until sleeping over was out of the question. Her mother decided being a friend meant paying me to watch her siblings. She chose humiliation loudly, attacking every insecurity in a chant that I'll never forget. She always calls me cute. She pets my hair. We laugh. She denies she would ever walk to my house. All of them had cars, even if their older siblings drove them. None of them shopped where I did. Some of them went to the football games. They cheered for different players. Players who parked under 8 squares of plastic covered bulbs and drank from scary loud pick up trucks. The players I knew souped up cars with pine boxes, rims, and sat at the carwash til midnight. Our cars are clean, not new. Your cars are not new or clean. We were friendly, at best. The inside of home was a couch we'd sit on in dreams. Real friends find a way to bend back the fears until shooting means a camera. Violence cannot build. Passive aggression smells like racism rotting in my pocket. Desperately loving power, loving those who wield it, withers in the sun. It dries up, too brittle to add to gunpowder. No shots will fire. My pockets weep.

Words and labels

 What makes one a Master of a particular Fine Art? Is it the coursework, the talent, the gift, the craft, or something we've missed. In the Bible, there's the trinity. Father/Mother, Son/daughter, and Holy Spirit/wisdom. Wisdom is silently feminine. It is the magic and the stillness, the caring, the presence in and of ritual. Do you actually master wisdom or do you practice it? Indigenous cultures often work with the world around them. Controlling is far less of a goal. How does wisdom work in buildings and institutions built to control? Choose your words carefully.

To confer a degree is to recognize completion. To become a Master at something defines the work. The specialized research and study. Wisdom whispers in the late night. It wakes us from terrifying dreams. It guides us to write differently, bc we know the institution. We know how it feels in our bodies. Muscle memory is real. The degree reminds us of what we cannot see.

Words are spoken before they reach the page, just like a thought is subconscious before we think it. Wisdom is that journey. The greatest gift is to accept, without comparison, that your steps don't need nobody else's feet. You aren't meant to run another race. It won't be easy. It is yours.

I've spent my life carrying words. From nicknames to birth names, I swell and shrink, depending on what I am called. What feels best is what I call myself. I create titles for myself. I define me, outside of legacy and who knew me when. To live prodigally is to embrace freedom and accountability. It is the comfort to roam while being rooted. My practice is telling healthy stories. Healthy stories embrace the culture, the nuances, the dynamics, the language. They define aches and disease in context. My protocol is wisdometry. I use wisdom to get you to see. I have lots of tools. 

To master may mean to complete. For me, it's the beginning. It confirms I am authorized to do what I've been doing. I need to live in order to access my wisdom. How you living?

The Elephant in the room/Zoo Story

 Today, I pulled out photos. My mother captured the essence of teenage rebellion and depression. We still lived in my grandmother's house. For 3 years, we moved like she was on an extended vacation. The furniture remained. The cabinet full of salt and pepper shakers gathered dust. The custom cabinets, in the dining room, were still filled with china and linens. The plastic runners had yet to lose their grip. I was looking for the colors that regularly pop up in my life. The things that define me. Humans are a collection, unlike animals. We have tangibles that we carry and discard or replace. These pictures look like a mess to my mother. They look like who I've always been to me. Neat wasn't my style. I am all about comfort. I knew where my things were, despite what it looks like. I see where I recycled a big plastic jug into a fish bowl. I see where I stole a favorite laden to care for it. The basket of smell goods, purple and pink weavings, centered on my desk. The window sills are a light green. The tie backs are emerald. My favorite things watched over, from a shelf above; a music box, a jewelry box, books, a cat bank, and a mouse, in a blue dress, seated in a rocker.

I also slept with an Elephant. I squished her under my head until it felt just right. She wasn't fleece but warm and grey. She gave me security. My aunt, without children by choice, always gave me stuffed animals that made me feel seen. Being responsible for them was freeing. They didn't expect me to do anything but love them. I was okay in all my emotional states. That silent understanding was far greater than the distant silence between my mother and I. Somedays, it was the only salvage.

My grandmother made me a curtain to hide the papers under my desk. I chose the fabric. It, too, was lilac. Puffy, three petal white flowers with orange shadows repeated. They looked like peacock feathers from a distance. They were just a shaded pattern from the holly hobbie bedspread I used to sleep under. A lil more grown up. Still the same colors. Still the same fields. My window only saw the siding on my great uncle's house. It didn't show me the distance, like other windows in the house. 

Greys, pinks, purples, and greens. In HS, I was happily on the Grey team. Without the historical understanding, I was just happier not to be blue, my mother's favorite color. I didn't know that Grey meant the South, meant an alignment with treason, meant I justified slavery. In undergrad, I was denied the highest award. Suddenly, the provost forgot my name. I would not be a member of the Green and Grey Society. 2 of my favorite colors would deny me on an institutional level. Jesuits are crusaders who financed slavery and used Christianity as the tool to do so. At the same time, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority courted me. I wasn't ready to go pink and green, like my grandmother, aunt, and 2nd cousins. Those colors showed up in my bathroom, when I first bought my house. It was one of the signs I knew where I would live.

I was a founding member of a sorority. The colors are purple and pink. I'd found a way to tie my grandmother and me, again. Purple saturated my life since I discovered Prince. My father's living room is somewhere between lavender and lilac. Mine is only light purple on the bottom. I have room to decide if white walls are going to go grey. I have a turtle tank instead of a fish. The turtle is green.

Elephants belong to Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. They are crimson and cream. They are the only organization my mother ever considered. She didn't join. I never considered myself "black enough" to cross those mighty sands. I was lighter than most of the sisters. I love red cars, but that's about it. It may seem fitting. Some folks call me Red. Luckily, Loyola College didn't have Divine 9. I didn't start the sorority til 20 years later.

Lenoir Rhyne's colors are garnet and black. It's motto is translated "the truth shall set you free". Am I free? What is my truth? Who's telling my story? Garnet was my youngest's color for many years. It's deep rich pigment reminds me of blood when air first hits it. Black absorbs all. Black is the earth and the fullness thereof. I am seen as Black and choose Black. Many years after I'd chosen out of desperation, I chose myself. Private education is a zoo. I paid to be seen. I pay to take up space where I'm assumed to be more like a monkey or a clown. I have been trained to speak, walk, and dress for success. You can still see the sadness in my eyes. I may not remember everything. I'm still more elephant like.

I won't forget the moments when color reduced my existence. I am not and cannot mix. I am the spot in white spaces. The walls are bigger, older, and seemingly wiser than me. They painted themselves. My ancestors' sweat doesn't whelp in the walls, flake the paint, turn it ever so grey. My voice is disposable. I cannot speak for them. I'm only allow to be in space. I'm not of it. I have learned to wait and watch the paint dry. 

 My grandmother's death didn't change the colors we had together. I didn't strip my life of the greens, purples, greys and pinks. These colors show up in the flowers I choose or the clothes I wear. It's subconscious. I am comfortable in my mess. It shows my humanity. It cannot be defined by characterization. Every animal's body grieves differently. Moving them from what they know, not matter what the gain, doesn't erase that. It's the parallels observed that connect us. It's the dominance that divides. 

Humans are just as nomadic as their animal counterparts, by choice or force. When we realize that no amount of moving can bring us any closer to what we don't have, we will be better off. Zoos aren't humane. Schools don't really educate. Are white folks just that sad that they have to dominate everyone and everything, instead of investing in what they do have? Elephants are indigenous to people of color. We handle them differently. We honor them. They aren't for use or show. Tons of the grey is a beautiful heard or a life threatening rumble. They, too, are everything in between. Nothing is limited to the perceptions of humans. Once we get over ourselves, we will see that colors do more than we give them credit for. 

 

The Busyness of my Literary Legacy

 I spent hours in Barnes and Noble with my 2 sisters. Orland is a 2 hour flight from and 25 miles through varied Chicago suburbs. In order to celebrate a delayed 50th, I gave my sister the freedom to choose books she loved. I chose books that sat in BHM displays. She chose fiction. I chose non-fiction. She chose self-help. I chose Black women writers writing about themselves. My self-help looks different, but is the same. My youngest sister stood and watched. She's not a reader. She's waiting for this to be over.

Before I boarded the plane, I'd already revised sections of my story. I listened to the characters. I delved into their lives. I thought I was an assignment behind. It seems I was far more prepared for this week's class. My classmates didn't understand how I was painting the picture. They had to hear it.

And, then, my other professor lost a mentor. We've no class this week. Mourning take precedence. Another Young, Gifted, and Black Woman Writer has exhausted herself until transition. She wrote with people I've read or admired. She developed an MFA that redefined. In reading the interview between Valerie Boyd and Selaj Shah, I saw myself. I saw my manifested dreams and wishes comfortably chatting in a cadence they both understood. Who you read influences how you write.

Maya, Audre, Nztake, Nikki, Lorraine, James, Martin, Malcolm, Toni, Alice, Cornel, J. California, Langston, LeRoi. If I had to think about the literary lineage, Maya and Martin are more grandparents. I would be the love child of Cornel West and Audre Lorde who spent every holiday at Uncle Jimmy's house, Aunties Toni, Alice, and Nikki did my hair. They dressed me and let me be fly. Great Uncle Malcolm and Great Uncle LeRoi lived on the same block as Auntie Nztake. They popped up whenever. J. California was that cool cousin I hadn't seen since the last family reunion. Lorraine is my favorite big cousin. She lived how I wanted, smoking cigarettes over typewriters. We all understood our existence as political, radical, and a challenge. We provide varied safe spaces where Black is. It's excellence isn't limited to academic expressions. That only validates what we already know. God is all up through here. My pen is merely an extension.

But then, I get to play with Natasha and Kiesi, under the watchful eye of Jackie Shelton Greene. Dasan Ahanu is the brother I never knew I didn't have. Kelly Rae is the sister I adopted on site. Jilly, Erykah, and Laryn are my DJs. Ray Manley teaches me to battle while B-rock brings me back to Bmore. Hip Hop is the cultural evolution of spoken word. Bars show up in museums and on the lake. LB makes the words work until the bag overflows. Main showed me my dance is enough. We are more than curators. We are chosen family. These are play cousins, chosen kin. 

My stories aren't luxuries. They manifest in Chicago cold. They fill pages of books I discover when I'm not bound by text. I pay in the freedom of twitter, following the gifts of Blackness that shine within a few characters. Revising is the work of the Gawds. Editing ain't nothing but Wisdom. To write is a privilege I cherish. It was illegal. I was illegal. And still I rise.