Thinking with a heavy heart of the Black lives tragically lost to racial injustice not just this weekend and during this turbulent past year but throughout history. Today I share a breathtaking poem in every sense of the word by Khadijah Queen.
“I Have a Method of Letting Go”
Asthmatic child in a house full of smokers, I crawled once
under toxic clouds to find my mother
I was so brave I almost died, or desperate
I wanted her more than breath
I was so small & she could sing
anything alive, almost
She didn’t really know, doesn’t know now—
She is familiar with duty & made me so
I can’t live on that loss
In 1977 a bullet turned my brother into dust
His 18 years here, an invisible talisman we hold in our callous living
Sometimes I think my mother smoked to pretend to breathe him in
from Anodyne
live in the layers 