To life: I found Her in tear soaked pillows

Took me a while to finally put a voice to this.  It's been almost 2 years since I had a miscarriage.  It was a really trying time for me to say the least. Compounding the miscarraige was school falling apart and a relationship gone haywire so I was just a mess to no matter how you sliced it.  I felt like my world was imploding on itself.  Took me a while to find myself afterwards but all things work together.  Anywho, I wanted to share this.  I randomly wrote it (freewriting as usual) as a note to myself on my phone one night.


Tear soaked pillows.  Another day without you, but not really.  Your smell lingers in my bed.  I can taste you.  I could still feel you and sense you, your thoughts, your emotions.  I thought I was crying about losing you.  I opened up the deepest parts of me for you.  Fully exposed.  I let you in where our souls became one and as a result created life.  Love was an understatement.  I entered into the deepest parts of you.  Closely nestled behind your heart and intertwined in the intricacies of your mind.  You were home for me.  As the life inside me grows, a dormant part of me awakens.  I love both you and life in parallel yet synergistically synchronized.  So deeply it scares me.  I'm unworthy of such a perfect gift, far beyond a blessing.  Makes me question if I'm ready and doubt creeps in.  Now unsure of myself because of the crippling fear that I won't be enough.  Reaching for you to help me steady myself and it's just me.  Where was love.  Life-lost.  Where was the promise.  A large part of me died with life.  Hopes and dreams and heart shattered.  A broken soul.  I'm reaching.  This wasn't real. You weren't real.  Reaching for the me tucked behind your heart and in your mind.  Trying to find home.  Broken and shattered I'm trying to find her.  Between tear soaked pillows, screams, and nightmares I gasp for you.  You step back and fade into the distance.  Chasing a ghost who stole a part of me.  I cry for her.  Now left with a piece of me that I don't know, what's left of me that wasn't lost.  A stranger to myself.  Life and love stole me.  Struggling to find parts of me that I buried as treasures inside of others.  Now questioning myself.  How could I not see this coming.  I no longer trust my faithful sense of discernment.  An oxymoron in itself.  Then kicks in the blaming of myself.  I can't trust myself, not with love and not with life.  My most prized treasures were buried in life and love.  Had to find the treasure that Someone Else buried in me.  I found her in tear soaked pillows, between screams and nightmares.  While gasping between screams and sobs I found Air.  In small breaths at first progressing into inspirations and then deep soul filled gasps.  In utter despair, I found Her.  A queen, more regal than any version of myself I buried in anyone else.  She couldn't be buried.  She is light.  She was never made to be buried or hidden.  This is me.  I had to lose pieces of me in life and in love to find her.  I sometimes mourn for the me lost in life and love.  But I rejoice in light.  She illuminates the darkest of places so that my path is always made clear.  She lights the darkness of my past to remind me of the coals that were shaped in tear soaked pillows to make her eternally shining diamonds. A never ending internal treasure hunt discovering pieces of myself along the way.  I add to her light.  I won't take her away from Air, from You.  She is Yours.  A gift to me.  I guard her and protect her inside the sanctity of this temple made of my body. Because the next time life and love come along her light will become fire.  Incinerating all impurities.  The water and the earth from life and love create a perfect balance, a work of art designed by the Artist before her was buried in the making of me.  No more buried treasures.  They create a canvas for all to marvel, splendor and majesty.  The eye of the Beholder weeps at the beauty of this piece.  Coal turned to diamond.  I see all the colors in her.  I breath her.  She is light.  And she is whole.  Stop reaching.  Everything my queen, is inside.  God showed me myself between tear soaked pillows, screams, and nightmares.  Daily she amazes me.  I follow her blindly because she trusts God fully.  She was always there.  I had to lose myself in life and love so that in the solitude of tears and brokenness God could show me who I was all along.  I am her.  To Life, thank you for helping mommy find me.

What Ferguson,MO and #MikeBrown meant for me...

Writing.  Don't know where to start.  In 7th grade an English teacher of mine taught me the art of free writing.  To write without stopping, without thinking, raw unedited thoughts, thanks Ms. Monica Headen.  This is what this is:


  My heart aches.  What I've seen I wish I could unsee.  I wish I could unhear it and unfeel what I feel.  A righteous rage.  To cry out.  War.  All kept inside, bottled up.  A safe space.  Set free.  You look like me.  I hear you.  I see you.  I feel you.  Namaste.  The God in me sees the God in you.  A crying child, a generation abandoned.  The nation turns it's back on US, accompanied by the world.  Tears welling up. Chest hurts.  Throat closes up. Experiments to do.  Suck it up.  Talk to who.  Racism who?  It doesn't exist.  But I live it.  This is my life.  But it doesn't exist.  I should be writing a proposal.  Presentation tomorrow.  Images burned into my mind.  I can't erase them.  My screen has words on it and all I see are the faces of my people crying out.  Flashbacks.  Post traumatic stress disorder.  Sleepless, hungry, tired of being sick and tired.  I am the hope and the dream of the slave.  I am the hope and the dream of the slave.  I am the HOPE and the DREAM of the slave.  I am the hope and the dream of those in the streets.  I am the hope and the dream of those on the front line being shot at and spit on and attacked by dogs, ridiculed for the world to see.  Yet I'm here.  While they are there.  Disconnect.  Distance and circumstances all crumble in the face of this beast and we are all the same.  Marching together in this rain.  Fists Up.  Always up.  Holding hands in prayer.  A strangers bond.  Listening with eyes and ears wide open.  I love you, man.  I LOVE you.  He's my brother, she's my sister.  None of this matters outside the microcosm because it doesn't exist.  Anger wells up and no outlet.  Helplessness.  Holiness.  Praying.  Watching the world go on as if nothing happened.  A people protesting, unheard, forgotten.  Makes for good news coverage, shock value.  Other countries take it as their opportunity to throw dirt back at the U.S. but they don't REALLY care about us.

The rebellion has started.  The revolution will not be televised.  It's never been televised.  It's in the heart.  The heart of those who are called.  Called to love their sister and brother.  Called to stand up for justice.   We're marching, it's hot, it's raining, it's POURING.  Looking around and it's just us.  It's just us.  It's just us.  Just US.  No one will save us.  No one but us.  A deaf ear, a blind eye, many keep going.  The good samaritan story played out in real life.  A slain warrior in the middle of the street.  Body left for public display.  Billie Holiday's strange fruit.  True defnition of song cry.  Many keep going,
some stop for publicity and keep going, some seem to help but motives twisted, only want their name and face to be seen-fame, and they keep going.  Someone has to stop.  Someone must stop.  If it isn't you then who?  If it's not now then when?  The blood still sits in the street.  The spirits of those slain evaporating in the muggy and hot heat.  Like a public lynching.  This is a public lynching.  Remixed for 2014.

In a safe space we discuss our feelings.  Looking around at a sea of kings and queens who look like me.  Geniuses and angels.  Crying out for our fallen soldiers.  Crying out for our hurting.  Sick and tired of being sick and tired.  Anger.  A rebellion is born.  Welcome to the revolution, I say.  Welcome.  From the elders of the civil rights movement, from our ancestors of the African Diaspora and slavery, welcome.  Rise up and claim your rightful place.  This will not be easy or fast.  But be brave.  Be well.  When it gets physically sickening take a step back and be well.  Love each other.  Support each other.  Live.  I'm working on being well.

Father wasn't there.  Mother wasn't there.  But I had a grandfather.  A militant Black grandfather.  A love I've never known.  Imparting his stories and history at a young age.  Long winded.  Didn't want to hear it but the seeds were planted.  A little girl from the hood, kicking it at the salvation army with all the other hood kids.  Hey Grandaddy, let me tell you about Ferguson.  "I am PROUD of you".  This is the proudest I've EVER been.  To know that you care about something and someone other than and more than yourself is what this life is.  This is what I fought for.  Not for me but for you.  For your generation.  And now you must fight for those who come after you.  The generation before you has failed you but you have to pick it up.  The ones behind you need you.  You are charged with carrying the torch that burns inside of you.  A fire lit by God.  Don't ignore it.  This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.  

 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:14-16

Faith steps in.  This is what my faith is.  My faith charges me to stand.  What is it to believe and never exemplify.  I stand and sing and pray and pay tithes (sometimes..I'm honest) but I'm silent when my brother is murdered.  I'm silent when my children cry out.  I'm silent when I pass by those living in poverty who look like me and aren't alotted the same opportunities.  A shake of the head but it's become "normal".  Kids back home dropping dead like flies.  Kid shoots hiimself in the back of a cop car, while handcuffed.  Drive-bys that never get solved.  Princesses shooting for bad bitch status.  Princes getting money.  I'm silent and I keep going to church...my personal development and my tunnel vision relationship with God is growing.  I can speak in tongue and pray a prayer to light your soul on fire.  Heal myself by faith and those in my circle.  Lately been feeling conflicted about what this all means.  What is this church if it stays in these walls.  We all practice self development under the disguise of God.  I'm good on that.  I'll just do my own thing.  Living a life of love, lost but slowly being found in the wilderness of my heart and mind and spirit.  But I was blindsided in Ferguson and the tunnel was shattered.  A veil is lifted.  This is what love is.  This is what faith is.  It is radical.  It is revelation.  This is God.  To have a heart that feels and senses those around you.  To put someone's life before your own.  To not look away.  To stop and acknowledge.  To turn the tables over in a church like Jesus.  To stand up to Roman empires.  To stop like the good Samaritan.

Now what will we do with our degrees. What will we do with our stethoscopes and our lab coats and scrubs, our law degrees.  We are the hope and the dream of the slave.  This school (Meharry), your school (HBCU especially) is the hope and the dream of the slave.  People literally DIED so that we can sit in the seats that we sit in.  We now hold these seats and we sit on their blood and their sacrifice.  Let us not forget.  Let us be reminded.  This is a wake up call to the sleeping giants.  A wake up call to the warriors.  Yes excel in school, yes become a doctor, a dentist, a scientist, business owner, CEO.  But stand for your brothers and sisters.  The opportunities afforded to you must be made available and accessible to them.  For our brothers and sisters who are gay, lesbian, trans, and women too.  Do not conform to a mold and be afraid to speak out.   Let not your white coat act as an invisibility cloak to who you are.   Deep seeded oppression so engraved that we identify it as ourselves.  Be bold.  Be free.  It's just us.  Be free.  Be free and be well.  

And these are my thoughts from Ferguson.

**Shoutout to Carmine Matlock for some of the pics**