The stream of all of it was there.

Flowing like a stream or perhaps the tears of my inner goddess, forbidden, cryptic, yet flowing with healing energy.

I ran naked through the woods.

Was I free?

Were there dogs barking? Was the crackling underneath my feet my own.

Or were they slave catchers?  Slave catchers.

 

Faces of eyes that smirk.  Terror jokes laughing at me, coming to get me, being thrown into the wind.

Could I be transported?  Where did I come from and where was I going?

 

I looked down and there it was the look on my face warped and twisted in its reflection.

My feet were cold and wet.

My body clothed and not naked.

My throat hurt as if I had been singing for 300 years.

Old negro spirituals or gospel songs that required pieces of my soul.

“Sing louder,” the choir director of my blackness shouted, “Sing like you mean it!”

“Goddammit, sing.”

“Sing muthafucka, sing. You black, sing like you mean it. Or go the fuck home because we need to bring the sick and shut in comfort, somebody is late on the mortgage.”

“Sing, damn it.  Sing.”

 

I sang.

Songs that had the folk saying, Uh huh. Amen. Speak to me. Go on.

Songs that wrung my heart with blood dripping down flowing through the pews and out into the street.

I wanted to shout, to fling my body so all of the pain would leave it.

My voice hurt.

 

I wanted the sun to come and save me.

Light saves don’t it. It is the center of everything and if this is true does this mean that sun rays will save me.

The rays break through the sky and wrap around the branches.

Sky is blue and comforting.

For one split second I forget that this is now.  They killing people like me.

“Sing, like you mean it.”

 

I stay in that stream for a long time because either side will hurt me.

The past to my right and the future to the left.

Plates of macaroni and cheese dipped in nihilism.  Cornbread dripping with Clinton butter.  Sweet potato pie with a Bern to it. A fallen branch upside my head that Trumps me.

Truth is…Hope is the thing that white people give us on Easter, Christmas and maybe on the last day of Black history month.

Oh I forgot Santa.

And if you were me what would you long for?

Would it be water?

Would it be sunlight?

Would it be a meditation room, a street, a twitter account, a wordpress blog?

What would you want?

“Sing, damn it!  Sing, like you mean it.

 

Free me. Transport me.

Kiss me into completeness.

But always remember, you too may have to choose either partial love or freedom.

I chose freedom.