Odelegy
At 27, my biggest fear was losin’ it all
—Kendrick Lamar
Few hours before 27 arrived, ready to evict 26,
I see, five times on a highway in San Antonio, a sign
that tells me to arrive alive. I find myself, again, inside
the dream in which I’m both alive and dead. To be a Black
man in America is to be already dead. Days before writing
this, I respond to a Facebook post that reads: If you don’t
put chips in your sandwich, you’re dead to me. I been casket
ready, I say. This is the most honest thing I’ve written in a
while. I’m 27 and I am still alive. Amen. Outside the dream,
my mother ushers me into the new year with songs and prayers.
You’ve just begun your journey, she says & arms me with declarations:
I am a threat. I am unstoppable. Somewhere, I imagine, a dug hole
waiting for my body. Praise then, the earth collapsing in on itself.
The hands that’ve pulled me out again and again. My voice—raised
in praise of my body, how it’s escaped Death again and again. Out
my throat, a dirge in memory of days I desired the sweet embrace of
Death. My hands—shaking & how my heart wouldn’t stop beating.
How scared I was of my hands, of all they were capable of. Here, an
elegy for the days I wanted to leave this body, though I didn’t want to
die. For the days I wanted to live, an ode. Dead inside, I praise everything
in me that is still alive. I mourn everyone who left, everything that left
me for dead. I rejoice with everyone who stayed. Ode to everything
that’s kept me here. To brunch & lunch dates. To the invitations to
breakfast, an ode. To sleeping in & over. To the couches that offered
my aching body longed-for rest. To what we wake up to. The sizzling
in the air. Ode to Ed’s 20 second videos, which he sends me through
Facebook messenger to start off my mornings. Ode to my brothers’
embrace. My sisters’ too. Ode to poetry. To the lifeline of a phone
conversation. To the heavy weight of silence. To what is left
unspoken. Ode to the words of strangers & friends, which held
me & which I held close. The poster on my wall with quotes from
Chance, Ariana, R. J., Ebony, Katie B., Danez, Christopher, Clint,
Madi, Zachary, and myself to affirm myself. Lord, hear my heart’s
desire & yet, forgive the many nights I’ve asked you to rid me of this
body. Though I no longer curse it, there are nights I still lay wide awake
with longing. Answer me, the way a spilled cup becomes the answered
prayer of a rag. Neophile that I am, I have never not wanted something
new. To leave the past in the dust, even though the future is, at worst,
an uncertain lover. At best, flaky. She got a good head on her shoulder
but she never shows up how and when I want her to. And Lord, I want
her to. I court her, Lord. Both hands—full. Eyes large as Saturn’s rings.
My three stomachs & yet, I’m always hungry. My arms—useless
wings. My head and two feet stuck inside the sand, Lord. Forgive
me the days I begged for flood. How I’ve desired baptism a second
time, just because I did not think myself holy enough. My mother
said she watched me slowly give myself to the water & she, standing
at the bank, cold & all alone, did not know what to do. She said she
watched, helplessly, as metaphors about drowning comforted the child
she once cradled. Troubled by this, she was. Also, afraid—she told me
this—and I was too, although I did not know it. Lord, the troubled
water. O bless the child. Lord, the child in me! Who, because he refuses
to die, has kept me alive. The cot turned tomb! O praise its empty! Lord,
how many times I have begged for rebirth! Have mercy, Lord. I forgive
myself that I did not know what to do with my sufferings, that
I did not tell myself the truth. I forgive myself for the blinders I put up
just so I wouldn’t go to bed lonely. Ode to my loneliness, its persistence.
Here, an elegy for the warm bodies. I wish them all into the lonely night.
I hope they never return from the eternal slow-wave of it. I broke the vase
of one-sided love. With its shards I mark myself lest it return to claim me.
O praise hands like blades who will cut for me. Praise the blood-letting.
For what is let out, an elegy. Silence, if only a moment of it & not one after
that. I buried my old body and I do not desire to return to it. I know I can’t
escape my memory, like the kept promise of a plague, but this one thing
I gift myself: I will myself into a river and move on. Ode to side
of the bed that is now cold. I forgive myself for everything I didn’t
see, if only to convince myself that I was loved. Ode to the many
undeniable loves of my life. Ode to that which does not need proof.
Ode to faith, my mother’s & mine, though it is a candle in the middle
of a corn field. So much is owed the wind—my breath, my bones—
so praise the wind, for how it blows heavy. Praise everything it can’t
surpass and can’t suppress. My Invictus spirit. Praise. This too: that
I have not always known to be a furnace for risk—how my life
seems like an everyday walk on hot coals, though some think it
a walk in the park. Bless the years that have taught me that my father’s
skepticism is a gift too, even if there will be more times I say no to it
than not, when he cautions me about my hands, how they keep throwing
caution to the wind like confetti. O bless the years that have passed
to give way to my father calling me into his room to say, You are
no more a child, and, asking me to stretch out my palms, trusts me with all
his teeth, the stories he’s tried to but couldn’t swallow. O bless my father’s
and mother’s hands. Mine too. With them, I write an elegy and an ode
to the dying embers of their love. Ode to the love that is still there, even if it
has a different face now. Today, I forgive myself for the many masks I have
worn for the sake of being loved. Today, I stand in front of a mirror
and it does not shatter. Or does. Today, I recognize my own face and I am
not afraid. Afraid is not my name. If only this once. Today. This life—is it
not an abacus!? What miracle it is, that I have died more times that I
can count. So then, I mourn all the lives I have lived that wasn’t mine.
Today, I give them all back. Today, I choose this one. I offer my breath
as a prayer, for this gift. I curse my hands for how they have not yet
learned to reject what isn’t mine. For how they cleave to that which
seeks to cleave them. I bless this fragile heart of mine. For how it has
made itself a home, for how it tells my fears to make themselves at home.
For once, I do not want them out. Instead, I say to my fears: I love you.
I love you. I love you with a fierce kind of love, oh fears of mine. I who
have always been water. I who have always sought fire. I who have always
feared love, I say to my fears: O the inextinguishable flame of love &
the moon undresses herself. Who better than my fears know my deepest
longings, all the things I have given my body to. O the many things I have
sacrificed for the sake of the life I have always dreamed for myself, a life
different from this one. O bless my hands for learning the language of Yes.
For learning the language of Yours. For learning the language of Receive.
O bless the house on sinking sand that has long housed my fears. O bless
the crashing of the waves. O bless what remains. O bless the water. O
bless the water. O bless the water. Even though it almost did, it did not
drown me. O bless my gills. O bless my lungs. O bless the air I breathe
in to welcome in a new year that finds me alive. Amen. Amen. Amen.
To You in Your Dark Lake Moving Darkly Now
for O. G.
at 7 weeks
O won’t you
bud, my berry
blue: ten thousand
times bigger now
than when your mother
& I dreamed you in-
to being. My blue,
it could be true,
it could be myth,
that boiling blue-
berries in milk
gave the early
colonists gray
paint. It matters
little, my truest
blue. I cannot
wait to paint
the world with you.
at 14 weeks
Next to the shadow of a tree whose name
I did not know, I sat & thought upon
the navel-orange size of you; about
the navel orange, too. I am obsessed,
I must admit, by what (& how) a thing
is named & is unnamed. Coincidence
is what we name what we cannot explain
through linear time. Let’s say your story
actually started in the seventeenth
century, inside a monastery… Dear
one, I think the womb must be a country
too. The whole of you a fist, what law-
less law did you protest today? Did you,
dear one, did you at all protest today?
at 21 weeks
My sunflower; now, crown to heel,
the size of a large banana, you kick kick
kick & stretch, just like your mother’s skin.
Bless it, how her body continues to make
room for you. You bodysurfer, you; belly
surf. May it ever be, the untroubled water
you swim in & if there be anything at all
that troubles you, give it trouble, dear;
trouble it good. Dear you, don’t you forget
to thank the neurons in your brain today.
The amniotic fountain that you drink from,
bless it, that every day it has a different taste.
at 28 weeks
[…]
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Ayokunle Falomois Nigerian, American, and the author of AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSo