Roots & Hope
Soulful Reflections on Faith, Healing, and Young Adulting
Category: Poetry
-
Geography ain’t innocent. In the U.S. alone, white colonizers stole and spit on land, partly through mapping, naming, occupying, and defining borders with no regard for Indigenous communities. They committed genocide and displacement while also stealing my ancestors from Africa for centuries of bondage. Within the context of geography, I have long hoped to understand…
-
To whom can the title, educator, call home? How is it defined and fully embodied? Questions like these underlie my life’s hope of honoring legacies and possibilities for Black, intergenerational wisdom and healing. In mid-October, a graduate school fellowship brought me back to New Orleans, Louisiana. My first time going was in July 2019. That…
-
God, when I die, will I be able to fly above the clouds? Will I be able to time travel and see myself being born and celebrated? God, what was the top Hip Hop or R&B song on my true birth day? Can that be the soundtrack of my voyage? When I die, will I…
-
I wish I learned how to swim I wish I learned how to dance I wish I learned that I could enjoy something without being good at it I wish I learned how to color outside of the lines I wish I learned how to fight I wish I learned that adults were still kids…
-
What if loneliness didn’t have to be the end of the world? What if, instead, it could be a beginning? An invitation to admire strangely beautiful scenes and just wonder, for the joy of it, about everything. * Today, I cried at the beach. I craved a lover to sit with me, but my sadness…
-
Forgive yourself for not always standing up for yourself. Forgive yourself for pretending like those offenses made against you were okay and even laughable. Forgive yourself for letting others define and limit you. Forgive yourself for all the unkind words you’ve said to yourself and really believed. You are not that person anymore; yet, even…
-
I was never designed to breathe in two places at once. I was never equipped to audition my jealousy for highlight reels without me. I grow empty grieving all the parties, vacations, degrees, relationships, and celebrations I scrolled through but could not live. I’ve been tempted to post every cosmetic thing while privately pleading, “My…
-
Sometimes,love means stayingwhere you are rootedand learningto be unashamedof the soilinside your gardeneven thoughit is still litteredwith the historyof broken glassandbroken peoplebroken bywhite supremacy,so brokenthat thoughthey looked like you,they still triedto break your mirror,Black girl. You should havealwaysseen yourself asbeautiful.You should havealwaysbeen protected.You should haveneverhad to healbefore your time. But you, Philly sis,grewinto somethingfar morethan…
-
Roots & Hope 