Garage
your collar matches
the jersey blue
of the license plate
my white dress matches the car
the jersey blue
of prison metal
my white dress matches
the cars that pull you over
of prison mettle
the arms that hold
the cars that pull
the white we wear
the arms that hold
the soft of brown
the white we wear
like summer armor
the soft of brown
the license plate
our summer armor
at your throat
I only remember being with my father one time when the police pulled him over. Once is enough. We were driving through the rural south. He was bringing me home from one of my summer enrichment experiences, the academic camps I went to in other states as if school wasn’t school enough. I don’t remember what the pretense was to pull us over, I just remember my father became a completely different person. A person I didn’t recognize. He shape-shifted to save our lives.
All the other times are stories. They start when he was on a field trip with the few other Black boys at his private school and their mentor. Guns drawn on the turnpike. And of course he didn’t have to be driving to get pulled over. Often in New York City, and then in Philadelphia he was stopped and searched and threatened just walking down the street alone or with groups of friends. Those godfathers of mine who share with him the tight edge of jaw that tenses when they tell these stories. The part of them still responding to the fact they didn’t know if they would live through it.
Last time my partner and I got pulled over it was nighttime in Durham. We had the Black Feminist Film School Fellows in the back of the car. Everyone in the car was Black and queer and more masculine than me. I was not driving. We pulled over into the brightest place possible, the parking lot of Hillside High School our historically Black manufacturing site of legacy. Sangodare says I became a completely different person. But my shapeshifting was not useful. It was a panic attack. Turns out I have it too. That place in my body that does not believe we will live through any of this.
In this picture, in this poem I struggle to reconcile the softness of the man holding his daughter who is holding her sippy cup, my father and I posing quite peacefully in the driveway in the broad daylight of my mother’s camera. Our soft white summer clothes that July with the metal of the car in the background. The detail of my father’s open shirt collar with the blue thin metal of the state. How soon and which parts of us turn to metal here?
In my dream this morning my father and I were walking in a river. We were wearing white robes. We were quiet and focused. The morning mist was rising off the surface of the water. In my journal I asked him “What if our ancestors who walked through water to escape enslavement did it not only to evade the tracking dogs, but also to baptize themselves into another vibration. Another reality consistent with their freedom?”
What is the river you need right now? What rededication of your body to another context? How can our evasive survival maneuvers become a baptism, a balm, a source of peace. I am asking for myself as much as anyone. My spiritual teachers have taught me to wear white when I need to be calm in spaces and situations I do not control. And so most days I match this photograph. And everyday the shapeshifters lift me up. Hold me in an embrace soft enough that I can still displace the skin of metal, the expectation of clank. The misrecognition of my bones.
I dedicate this poem to your softest armor, breathing. I open to the peace we can’t imagine. I remember. The river was there before the chains. I remember. The water is older than the state. I remember. My ancestors are all here, riverine right through my veins. The cup is red. But it is in my hands.
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. Videos, poem prompts, meditations and more are here for you in the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive. Click the link to learn more.