I Will Be Here
For the Women of Color I share Life with
by Shiloh Sophia
I choose you…
~
Last night in my dreams
I wrote you a letter
My dear sister, my friend, my beloved
I told you how much I missed you
How my love will never stop loving
How my life doesn’t work
without you in it
How I longed to see
the palms of our hands
when the pomegranate seeds
stain our fingers red
How I can’t imagine
how far we have come,
and yet how much farther
there is to go
How I remember
you laughing as we lay
on the red dirt ground
with yellow flowers in our hair
looking up at the expanse of sky
A sky we believed was ours
to soar in
That was then
I didn’t know then
the sky I was flying in
was so very different
than the one you
were flying in
I said to you…
“I am afraid they will separate us
as they have done before,
put us in different parts of the land
tell us made up stories
that keep them safe
and us in danger
of losing each other”
The white men
We always spoke freely about them,
white men with wrong-headed ideas
not made for humans
and not for little girls
Men we would not invite
to eat at our table
When were are grown,
men who would never
be our lovers
We didn’t know who they were,
we had never met them
we did not see their faces
in our neighborhood
‘They’ morphed into
The Man Without a Face
We were scared of him at night
when we told stories under the covers
with a flashlight,
giggling but spooked deep in our belly
In the morning our mothers
would have to clean cookie crumbs
from the bed sheets
while we ate cereal from
pink plastic bowls and watched
Saturday morning cartoons
The divide and conquer
we learned about from our mothers
as young women,
is back again and it feels
even more scary than before
I turned away from the fear today
and I asked you to dance with me
in the green grass of our dreams
I asked you
if you would paint pink clouds
and stars on our bodies
and you said “We can become
the new landscape
where all girls are safe,
valued, loved and cherished”
Will we ever be without
fear of attack?
We didn’t have an answer then,
and I don’t have one now
I say to you now
“I cannot know the pain
of your years in silence”
How when I thought we were safe
in the room with the other girls,
you did not feel safe
but I didn’t know what was wrong
or how to help and you…
You could not tell me then
you ran home and did not
come out to play with me
for three days,
I remember
I remember knocking on your door
and your mother shaking her head no,
And then finally we climbed the fence
and fell laughing again on the ground
With chalk we made signs on the street
for all to see, that we….
We would not be torn apart
Your mother thought we would not last
I wanted her to be wrong
You used to tell me
not to spend my energy fighting
Should I fight now, with all of my might?
How can peace be here in our bodies,
when we tremble with rage?
I know right now
you might not answer me
Are you mad at me?
I pass a note under the door…
Will your mother shake her head, no
when I bang on the doors to let me in?
The me beneath the me, the soul me,
will never let my heart be away from you
My tears are fire that turn to a river
a river that flows from my heart
to yours even if some days
you cannot believe me
We are different, you and I
and this difference is what I love
what I long for
what I cannot live without
Your life matters to me
I cannot see what you see
I know you couldn’t always show me
How tired you were
when we were older,
the night you told me
how you felt
they were trying to kill you
I didn’t need to ask who ‘they’ were
No one was there but us
I beheld your boogie man and realized
in a land that does not
honor women as equals
is any woman truly safe?
I have nightmares about him too
But I know now
what I did not know then
This experience is different for you
I pray it isn’t too late
We did not have words for this
Our mothers did not either
but my mother told me.
choose her, choose her choose her
and so I chose you, again and again
in different women, different times,
different faces and places,
I chose you again and again
I did not know
when we braided each other’s hair
You were patient, I was impatient
You told me
“doing your hair in rows takes time
sit still”
and you playfully hit me
with the brush that had both of our hair
blonde and black
all mixed up together in the bristles
We drank ice tea out of big cups with long straws
We listened to music from the neighbors house
through the open window and we danced
in our bikinis even though girls
with butts as big as ours
were told to wear a onesie
We swore we would always wear
bikinis for ourselves
no matter how big we might be!
When we ran out of beads,
we used tinfoil
Does me wanting to see
what you see, count as love?
I will mark your name
in the sky with my paintbrush
and your story will be part of my own
I will vow to stand with you
even when no one else is standing with us
I will beat them back as I did before
and yes I did use force to protect you
I didn’t care what happened to me then
I just wanted you to be safe
I was expelled and
I said I would do it again
instead of saying I am sorry to them
my first essay “When to use violence in
protecting a girl”, I was in 6th grade
I broke his arm
after that he didn’t bother us anymore
I felt I was on the inside
because we talked about white people
like I wasn’t one,
then you told me,
what your father told you,
“white isn’t a race, don’t say that
they made it up,
like all the other stories”
I was relieved to be not-white
but I knew I was a long way
from home – what was I?
Mama said, Swedish, Scottish,
Irish, Russian,
What’s that mean?
I didn’t know
I left home 60,000+ years ago
and have been on the raod ever since,
you were taken, by force, 400 years ago
and some of you, 500 years ago
and before that and before that,
oh the memory of burning rises
One day I want to tell you about it,
how after we left, they accused us
of things we did not do,
but that is a story for another day
I will see into the hard to see places
until my vision is clear
Until you write me back
Until you take my hand again
The big people
said they wanted
a better life for me
somewhere more safe…
because I got in fights
Does that mean where I move,
you will not be here?
Will I be left to the White people?
I didn’t fit in, I wanted to go back
to the other colors
I felt as foreign to them as
they did to me
I begged my mother to come back,
we drove 45 minutes across the bridge
but your house was empty
Where did you go?
I wanted to tell you
my mother married a Black man,
I wanted your mother to know,
we aren’t like the other White people
I thought he would provide the proof
that I could love you as my own sister
Soon enough I saw in his eyes
the fear you felt that you could not tell me
The fear in me rose,
as White people looked
at our strange family having a picnic
on the lawn
trying to look normal,
trying to pass, trying to laugh
but we were already doomed
I was the witness at the wedding,
I signed my name, I was here for this
I am part of this union of Black and White
I remember the scent of your mother’s cooking
The cinnamon and clove and oil and the pan itself
I remember when you loved my mother’s quilt
the colors of red, orange, and black
I remember the day you saw
the boys try to beat me
How I fought them on roller-skates fearlessly
how they tugged on my braids and my face
was scratches
I remember how much you loved me then,
because I was brave like you
and you saw it
and how we didn’t need to talk about it
we just knew
and they didn’t both us anymore after that
I want to say to you, forgive me
but that doesn’t feel how my body feels,
even though I am so sorry
for all the pain that should not be here,
did not need to be here, but is so here
and isn’t going away anytime soon
I would rather say,
I choose you, I choose you
What I want to tell you is this
I will be here
As long as I have breath
I will be here
You can still tell me anything
I will tell you too
Don’t ever stop telling me
how this is for you
We will make a different world
even if it is just between us
Out there,
they will blame us and shame us
As women now grown,
we have known this place,
but between us,
there is an expanse of sky
big enough for both of us to fly
Remember when we found out
we both came from Africa
and now we knew for certain we were sisters
and our Black Mother was the same?!
How surprised we were,
we tried to tell our mothers
did they not understand?
We drew blood from our wrists
and placed them
together and our stardust
remembered our kinship
I believed it then
but I don’t
know if you ever did
I wish we knew then,
that the red in our blood
is the iron
of ancient exploding stars
making its way all the way
from the milky way
to where we are
Our red thread of connection
I wish we knew the truth
of sisterhood and how for a time
we would be forced to forget
I fear I will never forgive them
for what they have done to you,
to your kin, to your life, to your name
I will try to not carry this anger,
but for now I cry salt
from an ancient sea
where our tears are counted
by the mermaids we drew
in our journals
with their big hips
and glittering tails
The glitter of our fingernails
shining in the shadows
I will be here,
as ready as I can
when the fire in our heart
becomes a river of joy
I will dance with you then…
or now…
I can hear your song
when I am real quiet…
I can see your glory, your genius
your gift of being
I have never stopped searching for you
Take my hand…
I am here
I choose you
Will you choose me too?
I will wait as long as it takes
When you are ready
I am here
~
For the Women of Color I am blessed to call my friends, students, fellow artists and teachers. Inspired by many features and stories of friendships I have enjoyed, woven into one bone memory poem of heart starting with my earliest best Black girlfriend, Cynthia.
Written this morning after a dream, a feeling, and a conversation with a Black sister, a friend. It was written in between texts with her, about what we really believe about life. Where two or more are gathered, this poem arose. Still a work in progress.
May the heart of it be felt. No other words but poetry could speak to the Mother Tongue feeling. It doesn’t cover all the bases, all the work that needs to be done, but it is where I can begin to speak to you… I hope it is enough of a start.
And if too many people hate on this post I will take it down at my own health and discretion. These are wild times and I am doing my best to share, and also honor my own sense of safety in a super-charged dangerous territory. May love find a way.
~ Shiloh Sophia
Painting – Song of Sophia
