Worldview

When you breathe… do you feel how light you are?

Do you notice how freely the air fills your lungs.. capacity, and space…

Filling your back…

Aligning you to walk upright with the earth..

Imagine how it would feel if there was no support holding you up..

No space for the air to flow.

The spine, the ribcage,

Oh how the bodies need an array of things to succeed

What would one do without the other..

Bodies navigate like homes navigate like neighborhoods navigate like towns navigate like cities… not like my city

Separated by race financial inequities …underfunded in care while providing homegrown education in mental disparity

What a true lack of what home looks like in this world…to me

An oyester, I in the center along with this pearl I can't seem to grasp in the palm of my hand the lies they tell .. “The world is in the palm of your hands,” instead, it feels as if the world has palmed me.

And I lay there,

cradled by cracks, crevices,

swirled prints of all I could never have letting inclusivity and opportunity quickly trickle past me like the tips of a mother's fingers that couldn’t quite reach the child’s hand as they were being pulled apart.

I stand

on the backs of my ancestors

I stand

on the back of my grandmother

I stand

on the back of my mother…

I see

the world through her eyes…

I see the struggles of a single African American Deaf woman, I see no reciprocity…

In all this “world” has to offer

How it skipped this legacy

This place..

That housed my needs

My dreams replaced by questions at thirteen sitting on a corduroyed green couch with my aunt..”What does foreclosure mean?" "Do housing acts have any true authority?”

The struggle I survived.

The weight of this world forcing my gifts to be buried.

Troubled with revealing what living on this floating rock truly means.

Now.

26 years.

St. Louis City.

North county raised

Hard. Graveled. Gray.

Feet on broken concrete somehow grounded above pained soil and dying grass.

I wave to the neighbor who has no idea who I am.

We share similar struggles. Wishes.

Hopes to somehow feel light as a woman of color..

Hoping somehow to feel

Free…

To understand my place in this big ole world is to flow, to stride…

To align myself..beneath the depths..

To move for the community.. to move.. for all those who cannot shift.

To sift through the sand, the dirt, the tweeds.. the seeds.

To bury.. to harvest all that families no longer wish to carry..

with the privileged ability...

In this world, I wish to feel free..

To breathe… and feel how light I am

To notice how openly the air fills my lungs.. capacity, and space…

Filling my back…

Aligning me to walk upright with the earth..

To Imagine what it would feel like if there was a body of support holding me up.

What a place I could create for myself, what a home this Earth would be.

Bodies navigate like homes navigate like neighborhoods navigate like towns navigate like cities Navigate like space…like my space in this world.

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