A Letter to my Ancestors Before Election Day

I’m afraid that we’ve been cut off from what makes us of this earth
That the red clay and African soil living underneath our fingernails 
and behind our ears
That the seeds and grains of rice braided in our hair
The Odu, the stories and tales, even the nameless things
nestled underneath our tongues
Are beginning to vanish

I dreamt about that quilt you left me
The one your mother made that you took when you fled South Carolina
I’m convinced that if I held it, I’d smell the lingering scent of tobacco just harvested from the fields
I might hear the prayers you, or your mother uttered on the night you left
Could you tell me now?
What the prayers were? The visions you had, I know you had ‘em
There’s an election on Tuesday and whenever anyone says something about it 
All I hear is children screaming 
I hear water churning
The hull of a slave ship moaning
I hear my great grandmother being dragged to a graveyard by her ex husband

When this happens and the tides of grief rise
I close my eyes and reach inside myself
Grappling for that quilt, those bones, and seeds, and prayers
I become the Red Sea
Bloodied and polluted
Swallowing warships
Drowning out politicians’ lies

I wash onto the shores of Gaza where Jesus once walked
Finding a grain of salt 
That I carry with me to Greenville 
Where the ashes of my grandmother's church are spread along the Tar River
The church that emerged from secret meetings, hushed spirituals and 22 people formerly known as slaves

You know something about that,
Or maybe I do
From the sycamores trees that witnessed it all
What might emerge from the brush now?
Where wildness is rewarded with survival

I see us, you and me, together
Hurting, creating, caring, loving
building, cooking, fighting, 
laughing, crying, singing, dancing, 
Our way into this old new world
Sucking pieces of red clay and
Bringing our hands up to trees to feel what’s really goin' on
Over in Haiti, Sudan, Cuba
Where our cousins are gazing into the waters
That reflect our faces back to them 
To hear our love from within the belly of the beast

“We love against all odds. We love through dreams, prayers, and offerings. We love through ancestral wandering and sacred commutes. We love through resource sharing and lapses of void in conversation. We know love as a portal, as a way to become and become over again, evading the tracking eyes of many forms of surveillance and category.” - Anna Flores¹

1. On Border Dweller Love, a powerful piece by my friend, Anna Flores, on the barriers and radical realities of loving across the U.S-Mexico border.