the red line
do you see the red line in the trees
the hint of falling
do you hear a future calling
when you watch me sleep
the hint of falling
into place
when you watch me sleep
you wonder what of this is dream
get in place
take the picture
you wonder what of this is dream
and what is memory
take the picture
come arrange yourselves
you memorized
what sisters do
come arrange yourselves
to hear the future calling
do what sisters do
you, see?
the red line
in the trees
(This is another poem for my mama and her sister-friends from college. The first photo is the one in the photo album my mother gave me full of photos at the celebration after my christening. It is clearly a few moments before the second photo, which my Auntie Veronica —pictured here with the beautiful cornrows— sent to me recently. Everyone is in formation and smiling in the second photo, the intended result. But I am grateful to also have the first photo, a vision of Black women, chosen sisters, in the process of arranging themselves in relationship to each other. As Audre Lorde teaches us, it may be natural for Black women to love their sisters, other Black women, but in a society that teaches hatred of everything dark and feminine it is also a practice, an intention, a labor-of-love improvisation. Or as Toni Cade Bambara teaches us, via Aishah Shahidah Simmons “sister is a verb.” Yes, something to be studied and celebrated, never to be taken for granted. These sisters are still holding each other, even though two have taken to the sky. I have been observing this miracle whole life and am still internalizing the choreography, improvising across distance and death. The poem questions what is the background and what is the foreground, what is the memory and what is the dream. Most of all I am grateful to be held in the divine light of sistering past, present and future. So this poem is also for you, studying now how to relate, not by default but through intention. What is in the background, what is in the foreground for you now?)
