Coming Back to Breath
photo by adrienne maree brown
Yesterday while I was still reeling from the fact that George Floyd, yet another loved one , has been taken by an act of police cruelty, my soul brother Eric Darnell Pritchard began sharing this poem as a resource. I wrote this poem in 2014 and first shared it at the BOLD national gathering as part of a Black Feminist Breathing activity to center us and bring us back to our breathing in the aftermath of our collective witnessing of a police officer choking Eric Garner to death while he cried out for help. I don’t want us to need this ceremony anymore, but we still do. This is a poem to bring you back to your breathing, to remind us all of the sacredness of breathing. I recommend listening to the audio version and breathing along at the stanza breaks. Your breathing is sacred. Our breathing is sacred. I love you.
Dedicated to Eric Garner
And to Margaret Garner’s Daughter
*take a deep breath everywhere you see a star
i.
*
return to the place
where you learned
how to breathe
*
where night washed itself
into your dreams
*
return
to the place
where you learned
*
breathing was bigger
than you
or your fears of
dogs bats and sea creatures
*
and would continue
all night long
without you trying
to keep it going
*
human freedom is like that
unstoppable
as the ocean at night
sometimes the crashing is just louder
like right now
*
ii.
*
we are feeling it in our chests
right now
the underwater knowing
of upside down justice
that has to right itself
that hasn’t righted itself
*
the sinking feeling
that the chokehold of the state
is more persistent than the ocean
*
it is not
*
iii.
*
if I could
I would bring all our people
right next to the ocean
to just sit
and breathe with the ancestors
*
just listen
knowing all this sand
was bone
and the stars
are just us
reflected
across the black history
of the universe
*
iv.
*
i want every last breath
to be a tide going out
so we can imagine
some baby somewhere
gasping into time
with an unbroken custody
of air
*
i don’t want the choking struggle
the staccato of bullets
shattering the song
of what we know
*
but sometimes
even as the ocean
slaps the sand
it sounds shocked to me
shoreline shaping impact
this is happening
again
*
v.
*
I imagine
Eric Garner
becoming the ocean
like Margaret Garner’s baby
awakening stream
how all blood flows back
to the salt in this water
how something
unstoppable
screams
*
*
Learn more about Black Feminist Breathing.