For When Your Feed Becomes a Graveyard
For When Your Feed Becomes A Graveyard
My therapist told me
You're either alive or you're not
There is no in between.
So here I am, alive for now.
Writer, for now.
My words never leave.
They are in me
like life and love and messy truth.
It appears I am a writer
until I am dead.
My words always in me with every breath
waiting for me to find them
know how to call them
nurture them
and invite them to stay.
I write as a form of self love
self preservation
and acceptance.
I write for everyone who can't-
not as their voice but as a witness
to this continuation of being.
I write for everyone who is no longer here-
dead, I mean.
Their bodies no longer envisioning futures
but a different kind of creator.
Change maybe.
Or mothering.
Or bring something new and good here.
Because my therapist got it almost right.
We are alive until we are not
but when we are not we do not cease to create.
Our life stretches past
into whatever comes next after we die.
So the boy who played violin for shelter cats, Elijah McClain, demands response and asks for change. Breonna Taylor has her name written in law. Nina Pop and Tony McDade refuse to go unanswered and Amhaud Arberry continues running towards freedom for us all. And when Mamie Till decided open casket Emmett asked a people to move out of bondage. The list goes on
makeshift cemeteries on corner blocks
unmarked mass burials
scorched earth
haunted trees
and closed cold cases.
History remembers even if we do not record.
So my therapist was right and wrong.
We are alive until we are not. But even when we are not *this*
we are still here in the birth of movement.
In the tears of love
and rage of pain.
So when your feed becomes a graveyard
pay attention.
Movement
rebirth
burning
and burial is happening.
Do not miss the flood.
Peace and peace be to you on this side of being. And peace and peace to those on the other.
We have one wild life
and I intend to spend mine in observation
fluidity
movement
writing
self returning
submerging
continuation of the path never completed
by those who came before me.
I’ve meant to be more active on my blog. I meant to connect more, write more and engage on this platform more. But instead I found myself drowning, trying to find a life saver and reaching out into deep waters with no shore in sight. And part of me wants to apologize to you reading this that I have not been more vocal on this blog. But I am learning to apologize less for my survival. Not in an “I hurt you and I won’t make it right” but in an “I have been busy taking care of myself and I am figuring out how to show up and when to show up in ways that don’t destroy me.”
So today I am here. Tomorrow I will still be here- maybe not on the blog but writing and creating and being and living. I hope you all are remembering to take deep breaths and holding each other tightly. I hope you’re doing what you need to to survive and fight for the survival of those you love.
-K
Side note: I have been putting my work out there but mostly just on Instagram (@karenwangareleonard) and occasionally on Facebook (Kae Leonard). Feel free to follow me on there for more of my writing.