Undrowned

And my first marine mammal lesson was that if I breathe I can still speak even while crying. I can breathe through salt water. I can live through this mess.

I wonder why sometimes we congregate with those who have been hurt in ways that look similar to how we have been hurt. About how we sometimes (me too) name identities and even whole organizations based on our scars. And how sometimes those of us with similar vulnerabilities are the ones who scar each other. I wonder sometimes about what keeps us close, in a hurting world shaped by intimate violence. In a world that cuts systemically and deep.

But what if something else is possible, and my sweat is at stake. What if the repression of my freckled faults and fears is exactly what will stop me from honoring the ocean of my love, which is older than slavery and lived millennia without shame. What if my swimming unseen sacrifices the wisdom that would waken within you if you saw? What if I’ve trained you to ignore the truth about me at your peril and mine? What then?

And my scars are not all I want you to know. And your name is made where life makes itself in me. And your name is medicine over my skin. And our kinship is the kind of salve that heals whole oceans

I wonder sometimes about what keeps us close, in a hurting world shaped by intimate violence. In a world that cuts systemically and deep.

I wonder what our sensitive edges have to teach us. What do our mortality and openness mean to the ecology we could surrender to together?

What could enable us to live more porously, more mindful of the infinite changeability of our context, more open to each other and to our own needs?

recognize you, not of sharpened teeth or stinging tail, yet wide of wing, embracing salt, shaping nutrition with your mouth at the center of your chest. I would love it if I could be so coordinated as to keep my mouth closed while dancing resources towards you, your open heart. It might also help if I could filter what I need from everything else floating around me.

would call it in Jamaica, or as our other Caribbean and West African cousins might say “susu.” They gather in a circle and flap their watery wings to collect as much plankton as possible and take turns eating while the rest of the circle holds the space.

The world wants to be wherever you are. They get there with the tools they have. Turns out, the tools are weapons. But the universe has a Black technology. It is massive. It is body temperature. It is the space between us, rich with stars, renewable and irreplaceable at the same time. Maybe the world can exist without you in it. But I cannot. There is no such thing as home unless I’m with you. No such thing as home unless you’re here.