Only Almost Half Full — Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Last night the moon was a bowl again, almost half full out my airplane window. Slightly tilted so maybe moonlight, if it could spill would offer the contents of its light one drop at a time.

Last night, the moon in my airplane window and Tyre Nichols mother’s face on all the airport TV monitors. I can’t hear what she’s saying for all the amplified systemwide announcements, so I just look at her round face and wonder how she’s saying anything at all.

Audre Lorde published the poem “For Each of You” in 1973 for her children who she said were black “in the mouth of a dragon who defines them as nothing.” Like Tyre’s mom, RowVaughn Wells, Audre looked to the heavens. Here is Audre’s astronomical offering:

Remember our sun

is not the most noteworthy star

only the nearest

Audre’s clarification of what space means has trailed me since I was a teenager. I couldn’t grasp the meaning of this stanza until at least a decade after I read it. And then I shook my head. All this time I had believed the colonial education that taught me it was my brightness that mattered above all else. No. Audre clarifies while her children get death threats at their Staten Island grade school, it is where you are that matters. The sun is close enough to make all this photosynthetic life on Earth breathe.

But last night as a I prayed for the effectiveness of the airline provided anti-bacterial wipe and pressed my forehead to the airplane window, it was the moon that seemed to be exactly in the right place. 400 times closer to us than the sun and 400 times smaller. In just the right orbital position to catch the light of the sun and beam it back to us in different shapes, like a photographer. Close enough to pull the ocean out of us, remind us how tidal our feelings can be.

The moon, just a glorified asteroid, I guess. But talk about the right place at the right time, talk about staying power in motion.

Audre’s clarification in “For Each of You'“ troubles me because I live in what my beloved mentor Kai Lumumba Barrow calls “nomadic” times. As a home renter subject to speculative housing market cycles. As an itinerant Black feminist worker racking up miles on this airline that claims to be carbon neutral as if you can buy your way out of the carbon cycle. I am in orbit and it is hard to know with all these moving parts if I am close enough to you to pull and be pulled by you like I should.

But today Audre’s words echo even more because when the police kill our people, when shooters motivated by hate kill our people these are the words we hear too often “wrong place at the wrong time.” And looking at the moon who only knows how to speak in light and shadow, I don’t know if there is any cosmic truth called wrong place wrong time. I think the wrong place wrong time murders of our unarmed geniuses by the most heavily armed cowards on the planet are a pattern of ignoring the only cosmic truth I know, the basic truth of the cosmic sacredness of the lives of the people we love.

Tyre who the Memphis police killed, halting his orbit of skateboarding and taking photographs. Tortuaga who the Atlanta police killed halting their orbit of singing folk songs and hugging trees. They were not in the wrong place at the wrong time. Laughing with their loved ones, building community, protecting the forest, learning to coast. They were exactly where we needed them to be, reflecting light.

But the moon is only almost half full (46% last night, 48% right now) at a slight tilt. And the ocean in in me tosses all night because we still need them. We still need the light they would reflect in the way they would reflect it. All that scattered light.

I used to think the moon got its craters the same way the sphinx in Egypt lost its nose. Colonial gunfire. I don’t know why, just one of those childhood assumptions like how I used to think melodrama (a word my mother used to describe my emotions often) was some kind of lemon dessert. Looking back it seems I was raised to know more about the guns of the colonizers than I knew about astronomy or my own feelings. But this is what I know now: The deadly force of colonialism is not as old as the moon. It is not a natural pattern. It just feels like it is somedays because it older than this body that can’t imagine being as brave as the moon.

But the love I feel, the light I reflect back, the knowledge that your life is cosmically sacred is older than colonial violence. I believe the love that is allowing me to write these words right now originates in the same place that you originate, the stardust explosion where we first met.

So can I stay in orbit, letting all this light reflect off of me, with all my craters in view, evidence of everything in the universe that has crashed into me? Can you keep reflecting light when you too have your own rough places where something richoted off you while you were just minding your business?

I don’t know if I will ever be as brave as the moon. But I know I want to. I know I want to stand between you and all the light and shadow that we don’t yet understand and shape it into some kind of gift.

And as long as you’ll have me, beloved, I’ll be here at this distance, just this size, reflecting whatever angle of light I can catch back to you. Because love is my orbital assignment. Even today. When I am tilted. And only almost half full.

P.S. I adore you. If you want to reflect light in community with me I’m perpetually here at The God of Everyday: A Week of Practice.