waiting,1
seed.2
(braids)3
wayfinding4
Note: Thanks to K, Y, and Y for the conversation about citations.
I remember when I was little being brought to Coney Island to see Dr. Omolu’s tribute to our ancestors, Black people dressed in white scattering handfuls of flower petals, laying down bouquets, returning to the sea. I remember the shapes our bodies made coming back to something that goes on forever, knowing remembering can also be returning can also be mourning can also be waiting, breathing in the waiting, a waiting with no end.
The day after our picnic when I had waved shyly to your mother’s god through layered curtains of orange peel, I held the creek in my hands and felt my tongue swim away. You laughed and said a minnow was biting at your thigh. When I held you the water droplets on your shoulder danced and hummed. My minnow tongue was upstream so I couldn’t answer, but I wanted to say I’d once forgotten I had a body too. One time in Gemini season I squatted next to you and watched the path of a snail through water that felt like the seconds before coming. Told you I didn’t know how to skip a rock because I’m afraid of drowning things.
You held my hand around so many pieces of earth made for skipping, but none of them were flat enough. You offered your tabled palms, the shelf of your collarbone, your deepest sleep.
I kissed you instead and felt your smile widen past five cities. You said I deserved to be loved as deeply and thoroughly as a seed. Since then I’ve only dreamt of stone fruit falling apart in the sun.
[Black] “womanhood is the country i come from” (Jamaica, c. 2003) // New braids new beads no front teeth and a reckless kind of body joy. In the sand at the bottom of the swimming hole, my feet stirred up small stories and half wonders. A crab claw spun backwards in time, returning with a full body and shell. She wove herself around my ankle as a thank you, gifting me sorrel flower for beauty and driftwood for protection. Each bead on my hair became a sticky orb of spider silk. On the advice of a strand of kelp I jump-dived into the deep end and came up with a mouthful of salt. The difference between freshwater and ocean was only a direction, only a bite of grilled fish over a spell cast with fire, all in the stories I was learning to tell.
Coming back too late from the beach in a crowded PTSC bus, I met she and her mother who pointed me to my next connection, watched me up the stairs, called my phone to make sure I reached. I want to tell you that water has introduced me to all my mothers. Has formed me into all the selves I own. I want to tell you that I was born of people and their people and their people before them who have never lived landlocked. That we can make a coastline in a bottle, conjure warm waves in the dead of winter. I want to tell you that every true love I have known has been blessed by the sea. àṣẹ.