Mourning the loss of an icon

Chadwick Boseman

An actor

A man

Who in memorializing Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall, reminded us of modern histories being erased from most textbooks, dying in the caskets of our elders, clouded by false progression and stifled by our hopes…did a great thing.

But it was not enough.

He took on another, more fantastic role in a universe of super heroes, fictional and not.

He brought to life a character in the Black Panther that was our collective character…

I needed to have you close, but you can’t be here prince…

My sun who moves cloudy skies…

It is raining.

I slept in your room last night so I could be comforted by the box of childhood toys hiding in your closet, peaking out if I looked…

Figurines of Black kings and superheroes mixed in among the cards and relics of childhood fantasy.

I needed to know that you are protected by my dreams for you…

I hoped as I drifted back to sleep that you would take care as you are out there fighting for your life, making good trouble in this moment.

I woke to a message from you…you heard the news too…

Don’t hate 2020 precious manchild, it is showing us who we are.

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What a powerful word–union. It makes us think we are united with others, in association and in alliance.

But what happens when the strength is not shared between members. When links in the chain are broken or worn down?

What happens when leadership within those guilds (I see the synonym and like it) choose to advance the causes of their fathers and mothers, their fathers and mothers and the generations before them, which I know is rooted in security for them and their family…not mine? When memberships is tied to that history dictates the stories that will be told and the hands that will guide the lenses…what do we do? It is not lost on me that this Hollywood tale is not unlike what we see in law enforcement or teaching…in 1906, Black teachers stood together, sixty years later they were subsumed, fifty years later, where are we now, fifty plus one year later–we are only at the committee stage of any resolution acknowledging a culture of white supremacy among our ranks?

It is now 2020…at the beginning of a new school year…and I am not sure how unionizing is working, for anyone. Do we ask for life insurance coverage for the certain loss ahead? Do we organize in smaller cells who have our family’s best interest at heart? Black and Brown families. Poor families. Working class families. My families. I am all of these and none.

When unions make us stronger, we feel like gold braided into a plait, only seen when the queen sporting woven crown turns her head in the sunlight…

On the horizon

In all its many forms

Within reach and she tastes like love.

She feels like justice.

She sounds like laughter and Black girls singing.

She smells like cooked food soul rich with care and tenderness.

She looks like sons growing stronger as they run, happy as they go because they are free.

Black Joy tastes like rest on the lake when morning dew falls fresh on the nostrils and releases its pure, cool.

She feels like soil on owned land between fingers and under nailbeds that drop seeds into fertility waiting to bloom in summer glow

She sounds like family gathering after a long hiatus between hugs.

She looks like her mothers’ daughters growing stronger as they run, happy, as they go because they are free.