thanksgiving 87
(Thanksgiving ’87)
as if in prayer
hands clasped
eyes wide open
mouth closed
hands clasped
sisters held in blue
mouth closed
as if nothing need be said
sister held in blue
warm and close to winter
as if nothing need be said
listen
warm and close to winter
moustache glasses marking time
listen
we don’t know how much we weigh
moustache glasses marking time
eyes wide open
we do not know how much we weigh
hold us
as if of light
as if of air
as if in prayer
For at least my whole adult life navigating Thanksgiving with family has been a series of difficult decisions. As a Black feminist of indigenous ancestry, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning for how it came to be that we live right now in a society that answers the possibility of love with violence again and again. Thanksgiving has meant conversations to have and not have. Rare opportunities where loved ones have off of work and time travel to the context of favorite foods tinged with disbelief, dressed in a lie we don’t believe in but still use and live inside of in the supposed absence of a better story.
If there is not a better story, let there be a poem that breaks through the story of what is to touch what could be. This year navigating Thanksgiving does not feel complicated at all. Thanksgiving is literally the commemoration of a time when in the name of their so-called freedom a group of people ignored the consequences of the illness they carried with genocidal results. Which means this year, multitudes have the opportunity to relive not simply the mythology of the (historically inaccurate) “first thanksgiving” but also the consequences. Mass death. This year, although like many I miss my family more than I have any other year of my life, there is nothing awkward or confusing about this decision. It is a completely clear no. This year the time travel will not be visiting a childhood neighborhood or eating familiar foods inconsistent with my current dietary practices. My time travel will be through my mother’s photographs as usual. That’s her handwriting on the one photo in the album from Thanksgiving 1987. Am I looking out of the frame into this barely imaginable future? Is that calm exasperation on my father’s face the same expression he would make when I called him from college outraged about US bombings and he would remind me nothing in the history of the US nation state should have me expect anything different.
Really I would rather live through this with you than be right. I continue to love you enough to feel the pain of wanting all of this to be different. I wonder if you know how much you weigh. How your impact moves through air. How much you mean to life around you and beyond you. I want you to know how much it means, where and how you move and breathe. I want you to know how much I love you. This is my prayer.
P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.