Death and all its friends
When people ask me how to use sage on a Friday morning
I tell them to first
Open all of the windows
Make sure you are wearing something relaxing
Comforting
Have positive intentions
Light
Sage will continue to burn until your spiritual journey is complete
When I die I want a Black woman to eulogize me
I know
Only a black woman could understand the bosom bust and bones left at the alter
Only a black woman
could orate a life of such spectacle
Such wonder
I've been surrounded by Black Death my whole life
Some of my fondest memories were spent in a pew
Beside my sister
With a dead body festering at the alter
Our giggles blending in with the hymns of grief
Now I do not know the difference between crying and laughing
My aunt died next to my Bigma
While she was sleeping
She woke up to a body
But the child that once clung to her bosom
she had been missing the whole night
In the dead of June, death suffocates my memories
I see
hands over chests
I hear
the rattle of my Grandmothers breath
searching an empty cavity for her baby’s soul
That she never found
"Open a window" she said.
They left a Black woman’s body in her mamas house for hours
Hours
she lay in death
in the only place her mama could lay in sleep that night
I Wonder if she felt the earth cracking in the stillness of the side of the room her baby died
Or if the newfound sanctity of the space reminded her of her Holy spirit
"Open a window
Let her soul wander free"
My Bigmama said
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