My People Born on Water

I keep thinking about the stories we don’t know about those people who made it out or through or at least to the next generation. I want to know them. Feel them. Squeeze and study them. Right now I am caught up in my thesis project and every time I read a new witness, I keep thinking about my people; not just Black people, but the particular Black people who birthed my lineage. It’s Black History Month and we celebrate who we know. I want to learn from those people, pinned to the wall of history, waiting for someone to unearth their witness. I find myself as Jimmy Baldwin—and Zora Neale Hurston and Audre Lorde — once did, standing in and above history, screaming out in search of discovery— to unearthing the stories dirt rests over. My desire— longing— to unearth those people is really starting to haunt me. I literally can’t stop thinking of them; closing my eyes and seeing them; opening my ears and hearing them. I want to know my people. Woke up in the middle of the night and wrote about: My People Born on Water.