Experimental Prose, Amissa Miller
Invocation/Invitation
Thank you to the ancestors, who were with me then and are with me now:
Great Great Grandmother Lucy, asé
Nanny Louise, Ms. Lou, asé
Grandpop Jim, Big Jim, asé
Mom Mom Catherine, asé
Pop Pop Lon, asé
Aunt Mildred, asé
Aunt Emma, asé
Cousin Tam, asé
Ntozake Shange, asé
Lorraine Hansberry, asé
Laurie Carlos, asé
Robbie Macauley, asé
Aishah Rahman, asé
Audre Lorde, asé
June Jordan, asé
Lucille Clifton, asé
Octavia Butler, asé
Toni Morrison, asé
bell hooks, asé
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Shapes
Watch me as I draw a straight line on a chalkboard. See me wipe it away with my hand. Not well enough, though. The echo remains.
I know you’ve heard that healing isn’t linear. So, what is it, then?
Watch me as I draw another straight line. See me draw a wavy line through it.
Ebbs and flows, ups and downs, right?
I consider my drawing. I wipe it away with my hand. But you can still see it, somehow, can’t you? I draw a straight line. And a looping line through it.
I keep going around. It feels like I keep going around. Looping around the same hurt. But every loop propels me. Forward. I come back around. But. Each time I’m further along than I was before. That’s healing. Right?
I consider this drawing. I wipe it away with my hand. Of course, you can still see it. I draw a circle. I draw a looping line around and through it.
Not forward. Inside. Deeper inside with each loop.
I keep drawing. The loop becomes another, deeper loop. Then a deeper one. And a deeper one. All the way inside. To the core.
Not a straight line. Progress around a circle that leads to a deeper inner circle. And a deeper one…And a deeper one…Closer and closer to my core, to Source. That’s healing. Right? Did I get it right?
Did I? I consider my drawing. I wipe it away with my hand. Didn’t get it right. But, yes, you can still see it. I squeeze my hand over my throat. Shut myself up. And even after I releases my grip on myself, the handprint, the evidence of self-inflicted silencing, remains. It constricts. Faint and vaguely white.
Language
And now I put on a blazer. Now I put on a scarf over my wounded throat. Now I contort my face until it becomes my professor mask. Now I stand in front of a whiteboard. Now you are in the classroom of my mind. Now I give a lecture. One I prepared but never gave in any of my real-life classrooms. Now I perform a version of myself that feels like the only me that can be taken seriously. When I stand in front of students and pose as some kind of authority. No quiz or exam coming, don’t worry. I always resented the fact that I had to assign grades. Can we learn together without the imperative to perform our learning back for some all-knowing deity perched at the front of the room? And what does it say about me that I spent so many years in that position?
“The attempt to take Africa out of our mouths, especially in intellectual or scientific discussions, was (is) a political act designed to curtail the African’s ability to think African, and in doing so, proscribe African knowing and knowledge and thereby determine African being and doing.1" This means that languages contain logics.
I write on the whiteboard, the white space, inside of my head.
Languages contain specific epistemological paradigms
Meaning that African traditional languages have within them African logics about humanness. There is invaluable insight available for us within African languages, which hold within each word key epistemological paradigms about how we function as African descendant peoples. For Nobles et al, our traditional languages illuminate our psyches in ways that European languages imposed upon the experiences of African peoples cannot. Languages lead to possibilities for healing and well-being. When we demand that appropriate language is used when studying our experiences, we get closer to the ideal of –
I write on top of white and speak aloud:
Epistemic justice
Of returning to our own ways of knowing and being. Through these efforts, we can “rescue and remember our humanity, wholeness, and wellness.”
I pause. I check in. Are you still with me? Are we clear? In my mind, I am a good teacher. The only possible answer is yes. I keep going. Relishing the sound in my head of my own voice sounding smart. Sounding like someone worth listening to.
So, what are the logics contained in our languages, African languages, the languages that were stolen from us? Let’s learn three specific terms from the language of the BaNtu-Kongo that Nobles et al tell us contain logics of wellness as communal, that articulate a paradigm of interrelatedness. The interrelatedness of human beings among community and across the micro, meso, and macrocosmos.
I write the first term on the whiteboard of my mind, a space that is becoming less and less white as I write. I speak aloud:
Sumunu.
This term is defined as a “breaking of taboos, cultural precepts, and ancestral traditions.” Community members who violate the agreed upon ways of being in right relation to others in turn violate their own sacredness, the “sacredness of their inner divine presence.” We are all already sacred, but we violate this when we violate another. We violate ourselves when we violate another. We disconnect ourselves from our own sacredness when we behave in ways that violate what is true of the sacredness of another.
Now, as a result of this Sumunu,
I write and I speak:
Kizungu Zongu
occurs. This is translated as “tornadoes of the mind...a kind of spirit defilement or damage.” When the precepts and traditions that maintain communal well-being are broken, and someone is denigrated or dehumanized, the person who is violated experiences a disconnect from Spirit, a feeling that they are not “truly or completely human.” That they do not belong. And, as we have already named, the person who has done the violating is already in this place. The inherent worthiness and belonging that African epistemologies hold as true for all humans becomes damaged for the person experiencing Kizungu Zongu.
I write one last time, then speak aloud:
Ukukfakwabantu
translates as “diseases of the people,” a kind of interrelated spiritual damage found not just in those of us in this visible microcosmos, this 3D plane of existence, but also among the spirits and beings in the mesocosmos – that bridge between heaven and earth – and among the ancestors in the macrocosmos. This term, and the logics within it, hold as fundamentally true the existence of multiple realms, and our connection and communication across them. Embedded in the term is the need for our healing to address the ancestral realm in addition to the visible, material world. Embedded also in this term, I believe, is the reality that our ancestors are present with us and guiding us through our healing. We heal them through healing ourselves, and they are with us throughout it all.
These three terms –
Watch me point to each underlined term we’ve just learned as I speak it –
Sumunu, Kizungu Zongu, and Ukukfakwabantu –
they hold the epistemological assumptions that our hurt and our healing occur simultaneously on microcosmic and macrocosmic levels.
And this is where I end my lecture and invite you to process what we’ve learned by applying it to what you have experienced and observed in your life, in your world.
What do we make of these terms and the logics embedded within them? Do these logics feel congruent with or at odds with what we were taught about how the world works, how people work, how hurt works? How might our reality be different if we spoke this language and existed in a society created out of these logics?
Hear a clock chime.
Class of my mind, you are dismissed.
I am alone. My professor face falls. I am small. I hold myself. My voice is quieter now. Without a captive audience. Are you still here? Not as a pretend student, but just as you are?
Breathing. Breathing. Breathing.
In all of my years of reading and learning about sexual violence in Western academic texts, I have never read a description that felt so true to my experience. Perhaps this is because I’ve only been reading in English, and hadn’t had the chance to frame this phenomenon through the language and logics of African people. When I said in my interview for the 2nd of two doctoral programs in which I enrolled – both of which I would eventually quit – that I wanted to study how Black women could heal from intracommunal sexual violence, I was asked by the white male interviewer why I thought that a Black woman’s healing would be specific in any way that differed from a “general” healing process. We recognize what logics are embedded in the use of the word “general” here, yes? We see why I always eventually end up running away from the whiteboard, yes? Even as the whiteboard is still there, in my mind, asking me to prove that I know what I know?
All I really know is what I feel.
Feel
I remove my scarf. I remove my blazer. I slump over. I hit the ground. I crawl to my collection of numbing tools. Food. Wine. Weed. I turn on a screen. The faint sounds from an episode of the early aughts reality tv classic Flavor of Love. Reality tv is one of my neurodivergent special interests. I am obsessed with the study of human behavior. In part because I feel so not human. Weed. The sound muffles. I sit. I hug myself. Tears.
I have to spend every day pretending like I'm okay and pretending like I have my shit together and pretending like I care about what's happening when the reality is nope. I do not have my shit together, and I do not care about anything. I don't feel like anything matters. I – and sometimes I get scared when I get to this place because it feels familiar, this feeling of I don't, I don't know if I can do this anymore. And – And I – I've had these moments in my life before where I get to this place and people tell me, and I try to believe, I just have to fix this one thing. Whether it's being in an environment that's toxic and depressing, or being in a relationship that's unhealthy, or not being in relationship and feeling lonely, or hating my job, or not having a job to hate. I try to point to all of these circumstantial things, but the reality is that I just can't. I just don't feel like I – like I'm cut out for this. I don't feel like I have what it takes to survive this. I always find myself back in this place.
I feel like there’s nothing keeping me alive other than it being the thing that I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to keep waking up and feeding myself and surviving to do it all the next day. But I don’t actually feel like I know, for myself, why I want to be here. If I want to be here. And that thought doesn’t scare me. I know it would scare a lot of people in my life. Does it scare you?
If I decide that I can't do this anymore, and that I want to disappear, then that's also failing. We’re supposed to keep going, right? I don't know what for anymore. I have so much ease and privilege in my life compared to most people on the globe. I have no right to feel so lost and so ill-equipped to survive. I've had so much access and advantage. I've had so much support and so many resources.
And what does any of it matter? When I keep coming back around to feeling like I can't do it, feeling like I can't do this, feeling like I can't survive, feeling lost, feeling like I have no idea why I'm here, feeling like a fuck up. Like I'll never be good enough. Like nothing matters.
I really want to want to live. I want to want that. I wish that I wanted that.
Anyone in the spirit world who knows my heart. Who loves me. I need help. I need something. I don't even know what it is that I'm asking for. I just know that I'm lost and I'm sad and I'm hopeless. I need to know how I'm going to get through. I need some kind of reassurance, some kind of a sign, something to let me know. That I’m supposed to be here. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me to feel like I can stay here. Please help me to understand why I'm here. Please help me to feel like I’m actually living.
Please.
Oblivion. Then bright light. See me rise in a trance, hands over my belly. It appears as though I hear something. Feel something. Can you feel it? I’m breathing. Hard breathing. Groaning. Coughing. Violent coughing. Choking. Gagging. Wheezing. Then. Laughter? Laughter nearly to the point of tears!
Personhood
I’m okay. I promise. I know that was a lot. I can explain. It’s that – I think that I’m here and that I belong? Right now, for the very first time I feel like I’m here and I belong.
Shame. That’s what just came up and out of my body. Shame. So much shame. I didn't push it down, like I usually do. I said, “okay, here’s shame. Hi shame hi shadow I feel you.” And then I saw – no, I heard…I felt…there were voices. Did you hear? Voices singing to me.
You are not to blame
This is not your shame.
Sweet voices singing to me. Sing with me in any key and the angels will agree.
You are not to blame
This is not your shame
Listen to our song
Wrong is not your name 2
And then I felt it in the pit, right there at the root. I felt shame churning and churning and pushing up against my belly. And I felt a current. A jolt pushing it out
up and out. A breath, and then a little more breath, and then sound. Coughing, choking, like I was gonna throw up. You saw it, right? You heard it, right?
And now what feels different is that I think maybe I’m worthy and I belong. I think maybe I am worthiness and I am belonging. This. Changes. Everything?
Laughter.
Holy shit?!
Laughter. Breathing. A Shift.
Ooh. There's more
Breathing. Coughing.
There's more.
Wheezing. Coughing. Gagging. Panting.
Okay, okay, okay I can't do any more right now. I know there's more but I can't do any more right now. I don't feel safe to do it in this space where people can see me,
hear me. People are watching me. You see them watching me. And they might be frightened, and them being frightened might put me in danger.
Am I in danger? No? Okay. I know.
Breathing.
That’s it. I know. I know. That lecture about African-centered ways of knowing. Remember? I wrote it. But now it’s like I know it? I know it because I felt it. Feeling is how I know. Knowledge from feeling as healing. Integrating body in it, heart in it, mind in it, spirit in it, all acting in alignment. No distinguishing one from the other. It was all just me and I just – I was, I just, I, I was I. I was I that am I.
Breathing.
This is why I'm here. To remember. I'm remembering now. I’m here to remember this. And it is confirmed. It is so, and so it is. It is confirmed. It is so, and so it is.
More and more breath. Elevated. Very elevated. Almost levitated.
Thank you for bringing me back. Thank you for the memory. Thank you for aligning me. Thank you for reminding me. Thank you for singing with me
Thank you for reminding me of who I am meant to be
Thank you for reminding me of who I am meant to be
Breathing.
Okay. We’re back. Back to the ground, back to the ground, back to the ground. Name things you see. I see you seeing me. I'm in my body. I'm on the ground. I'm in my body. I'm on the ground. I'm in my body. I'm on the ground.
My body is... a good body…? No. Is it? It's –
My body is a good body and it is good to be in my body.
My body is a good body and it is good to be in my body.
Breathing.
Water
This wave. Yemaya. It’s coming and going in waves. Because water, water reminds us of our oneness. Water is the gift that reminds us that we are not separate, that we are whole and part of the whole. Everything that needs to move through you
will move. Everything that's been stuck will, will, finally move. A continuous practice.
And we are in it together. Because we are all one. You can't just take one drop of ocean and say it's about that one drop’s motion. No. This is not my own. Not just me. Everyone. You. Them. All realms. Those before and after. All of us. All of us healing.
The way that I am both inside of and outside of myself right now. The way that my consciousness is shifting to make sure that I'm coming back down to describe and contextualize this. I am in all of these realms at once. I was about to say I'm moving
back and forth between them, but that's not even it. I am in all of them at the same time.
My pitch is elevating. Whispering.
The microcosmos, the mesocosmos, and the macrocosmos. I am in them all at the same time.
Breathing. Elevating. Breathing. Elevating. Breathing.
They say that one could, during one’s time on Earth, experience the macro, experience the higher realms, even while still here within the microcosmos. And it’s happening. I’m happening. I know the truth. I get to live the rest of my life on this Earth with the truth because I am here for healing.
___
Breathing. A shift.
Pleasure
Ohhhh, healing feels soooo goooood.
Wait. Stop everything.
Is this supposed to feel this good…?
I’m breathing harder.
Oh my God
And harder.
I – This is – Oh God – Healing is – Oh God
Harder.
So good everything feels so good I – I get scared when things start to feel too good. Do you? I can’t embrace it. I brace for it. Against it. It happens to me but I
can’t - I can’t -
Breathing.
Crying.
Breathing.
I place my hands over my heart.
Tell me. Why am I afraid of pleasure? Why am I afraid of feeling good? Why does this set off alarm bells in my body? Why do I brace for impact when pleasure arrives?
Breathing. A shift. I am channeling now. A voice that is both mine and not comes out.
You feel disgusted. Disgusting. You feel disgusted by your pleasure. And yes, you do things that you enjoy. Sure. And you do things that give you pleasurable sensations. Sure. Being full, being in water, being in love. Sure. But when it comes to that kind of pleasure - you know the kind we mean – you feel disgusted and dirty and nasty and ashamed of what feels good. Because the truth that you’ve buried is that your body responded to sexual abuse with a physiological arousal response. You did not want it to happen. You braced yourself for it knowing that you couldn’t stop it, knowing that it was happening to you and there was nothing you could do but be an easy target and mitigate the damage by not being a threat. And even as you hated it, hated yourself, even as you felt like you wanted the earth to swallow you whole, even as you wanted to disintegrate into dust and be tossed into the sea, your body responded the way bodies respond to sexual stimulation.
Breathing. Back to myself. In my own voice again.
It felt good. But it didn’t. But it did. And I never had the chance to choose pleasure, to learn it on my own, to explore it in ways that made me feel good about myself. I learned that pleasure and hatred and disgust would always be intertwined. I learned that pleasure was something my body did in spite of me, did to me. Something that made me feel like I was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to feel good. And it didn’t. But it did. And the “did” is the root of my shame, the reason why I feel sick when something starts to feel good. The “did” is the root of my disgust, the reason why I feel ashamed when something starts to feel good. The “did” is the root of my fear, the reason why I tense and clench and shield myself when something starts to feel good.
But I was a child.
I didn’t fight when it happened. I didn’t fight then. But now my body treats pleasure as the perpetrator. My body tries to protect me from shame by refusing to allow pleasure – that kind of pleasure – in. My body knows that I viewed that response as a betrayal. And it doesn’t want to betray me ever again.
Breathing. Crying. Breathing. Crying. Breathing
I was a child.
Breathing.
Body. You are good. Thank you for trying so hard to protect me. But now pleasure is no longer my enemy. Pleasure is my remedy?
Oh my God Oh my God Oh. My. God. I get to live like this? I get to feel like this? Everything feels like – I’m water.
Breathing. Whispering.
I am the water I am the water I am the water I. Am. The. Wa. Ter. I am the water. Water. Water. Water. Waterrrrrr.
Water is the body of the most beautiful Black woman I have ever seen. I want to be devoured. Obliterated. I want to drown in her. And when I do, I will be reborn. Smother me smother me smother me. I want to drown in it. Drown in her. Cover me. Cover me. I wanna drown, I wanna drown in it, I wanna drown! In! It!
!!!!!
Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing.
What flows from me returns to her.
Our pleasure belongs here. Our yesssss, belongs here. Every part of our being is
YES. Every single part of the universe is YES. We give pleasure to the universe because we are also the universe. And as we give pleasure, we receive so much equal pleasure. Because giving is receiving, because there is no separation. I am, you are, I am, you are. I am you are I am you are I am you are I am you are
iamyouareiamyouareiamyouareiamyouare
Sweetness
I think this is my technology. It’s pleasure. It’s sweetness. It’s the sweetness of sweet water. I’m sweet water. Mmmm. And Jessica Marie Johnson said that the Black Femme is a reclamation of sweetness as an act of rebellion. The Black Femme is stealing sweetness for yourself. Even within, especially within, this hegemonic hell. I learn to savor the honey of myself. In honey. Osun. In honey there is healing. Sweet. Sweet. Feel. Sweet. Sweet. Heal.
See me dip my fingers into a honey jar. Witness me relish the feeling. Watch me raise my fingers to my open mouth. Hear me giggle and moan. An ancestral chorus of giggles and moans emerges from my mouth.
Submission
I am startled by the voices that just came out of me. I drop my own voice to a whisper.
Am I being loud? No. I'm not being loud. Oh shit, am I being loud? I know that
I’m whispering, but I’m still a little bit not quite enough in my body right now to understand whether my experience of my physical senses is in alignment with the realm that all the micro, material shit is on. So I'm a little frightened that even though I think I'm whispering my senses are not completely grounded in my body because I am experiencing all states of cosmos consciousness simultaneously for the very first time and I'm a little worried that maybe I don't quite know how to do this I’m worried that I am not in control that’s all I’m ever actually worried about.
Breathing. A little louder now.
That helped a lot. To just say it. I am not in control. There is no control. Control is not real. We are not in control. There is no control. Control is not a word that the universe even knows – what it could even – no, no, no, no. Control is no. No is control.
Breathing. Louder now.
And when we relax into complete submission, when we relax into knowing completely that we have no control because there is no control. That is submitting. Submission is part of my process. And submission is exquisite. It is pleasure. Pleasure is exquisite submission. Pleasure is finally admitting and submitting. I want to drown in submission. In letting go. In letting gooooo. And gooooo is motion.
Ocean. Water. All moving in alignment. Waving forever.
I’m such a fucking bottom.
Laughing. Breathing.
I have wondered for many years if I would ever have a real, direct spiritual experience. I have always wanted it so desperately. But I was trying to control, what do you know? It could not move through me because I was trying to control my body, the vessel. I thought I could controlllll my disgust and my shame. I thought I could control them through controlling my body. And because I was attempting to control my body, my body could not move. And spiiiiirrrrrrriiiiiittttt could not move through meeeeeee. And nowwwww I ammmmm it. I am. We are I am we are I am we are I am we are I am we arrrrreeee. Every time I try to controllll this body, I keep Spirit from moving in me and through me and as me and I am. I am.
But. I really want to come down now. I really want to ground back down in the microcosmos now. Let me back down now.
Breathing. Flavor of Love is still on in the background. Has been this whole time. But now I am listening. I turn to the screen. I laugh.
Oh, I really, really hope that you can hear that. Can you hear that?
Submission? Water? Submission! Letting go as pleasure. Explicit. Drowning. All that shit I just said. This scene! Flav and New York!
I pause and rewind. I talk you through the scene and I am so excited to describe this to you.
So he's like, “Who gives the orders, New York? Who's in control?” And he’s got her up against the wall. And they're breathing hard. And I’ve never in my life ever
imagined that Flavor Flav could be sexy, but every human being can be sexy, I guess. Even me? And, and he was like, “Who's in control, New York?” And you could tell she wanted to say, “you are.” She was trembling, wanting to say, “you are.” Wanting to fully let go of control. It would feel so good. But she was fighting herself. And he kept repeating it. “Who gives the orders? Who gives the orders?” And they're literally in a boat on the water as this is happening, mind you. “Who’s in control, baby?” Let go. And she said – she did it. She let go. “Who gives the orders?” “You do.” And then they held hands and jumped into the water together.
Flav is the Universe and New York is me?
Laughter. Breathing.
Exposure
Do you think I’m crazy? I might be. Can I be out of my mind? If it means I’m more in my body than I’ve ever been?
When all you’ve ever known is bondage, how do you even begin to articulate to yourself what freedom would feel in your body? The attempt to place yourself in a reality that you’ve never known…it’s so inarticulable, so vast, the magnitude of it is so huge. When I sit with this, when I allow myself to open up and feel what that freedom might feel like. I crack myself wide open so that who I really am can step out and breathe and feel the sun on her skin. I remove a protective armor, stepping out from underneath it to just be. Without that weight. To be and move through the world. I have no idea what that feels like outside of here. I can do it here. Inside. But outside? I know that it’s -
Breathing. Breathing. Breathing.
Being exposed in that way feels scary. But. It also feels good. Feeling fresh air. Feeling lightness in the way that I move. No shrouds. No armor. Just me. Just the fullness and the sweetness of who I am. Not all of these masks – to hide, to pretend, to be who I thought other people needed me to be in order to be loved. To just be myself. There’s so much vulnerability and so much power in that. My full personhood.
Breathing breathing breathing.
This is a lot. This moment of transition between who I was and who I'm becoming. The part of me that already is the person that I'm becoming already exists. But I am in process. I both am and am not there yet. And the parts of me that still exist in an older reality are fucking exhausted. They're reaching the end of that story. But the attempt to act as though I'm not changing is draining.
I’m tired. I’ve been talking too much. I want to be quiet. Quiet is also freedom. The quiet is our interiority, our intimate, unknowable space in a world where we are always hyper visible always hyper consumable.
We force survivors to be public, to be loud, to make a spectacle out of
their trauma and I don't want to do that. I don’t wanna cut myself open. I don't wanna be consumed. I don't.
A shift. I am channeling a maternal ancestor now, Great Grandmother Lucy. She speaks to me through me.
This is not for them. This is not for them. This is for us. This is for us. This is for me and you and us. This is for daughter, mother and grand and great-grand and great great grand. You gotta keep some of this for yourself. Yes. Breathe, baby. Come on. Breathe, breathe. You know what you gotta do? You gotta say what you need to say out loud so you can let this shit go. So you can do the work that you really meant to do in this world. It ain't about this. It's so much bigger than this. But you can't let this, you can't let this, you can't let this keep holding you back. All we want is for you to step into your power. You're so powerful. Oh, it hurts us so much to see you holding yourself back, making yourself small, acting like you don't know how great you are, because there's that part of you, that little girl part of you that just needs to know. She just needs to know that she's not wrong. That she didn't do nothin’ wrong. You doin’ this for her so that you can really be you. You don't owe them no fucking details. You get to keep some things for yourself. And it'll show up in how you show up. It don't all have to show up in what you say. It'll show up in how you show up. Do you understand? You do what you gotta do, and you say what you gotta say for you, for that little girl you, finding her voice. For all of us. Do you know when you find your voice, when you say them words, you saying it for all of us who never got to say it? And we're with you. We got you. You know.
See me come back to myself. Listen to me speak as myself now.
I am allowed to hold some things for myself. The details get to stay in the quiet. I don't owe that to anybody. I don't have to prove or legitimize anything. My body is the evidence. My healing is the evidence.
Breathing.
Surrender
Channeling.
Life is not safe. This world, it is not safe. You’re not safe here. Not like you think. When you hear safe, you imagine the absence of harm. No wounds. An armor that can’t be pierced. It is not safe being here on earth. You are precious prey and predator. You fear being hurt. You fear hurting others. You deny yourself the animal inside so as not to pierce another. And she has nothing to gnaw at but herself. Safe is not the point. We didn’t send you here to never be wounded. We sent you here to feel, wounding and wounded, how it is to create from the ache of space. How it is to collect yourself. How it is to re-member, to surrender. First with self. Then. Open wide. Open to the unknown. The safety is in the surrender. And that’s scary, we know. The safety is in the surrender to the mystery. Becoming the mystery. Dancing naked with your own death. Hide for what? Shield from what? The void is not your foe. Remember and surrender to flow with that which is not your foe. Cradle your death in your arms just as dearly as you hold onto your life. You’ve died how many deaths? Every cut, every fall, every beloved back turned, every weep until you can’t breathe, every release. This feels like dying because it is. Let it go. Open wide. You are a threshold. All and nothing. Atom and universes. You have been here and been gone. Here and gone are both in you. And with that what do you do? Neither one is any less a part of you. It’s all about loving the two. You’re so afraid of it all being stripped away, forgetting that it has been before and you were still okay. Trust that what is here is here until it’s gone. And through it all you will still belong. Always looking for the next thing to fix you. Nothing about you needs to be fixed. Everything simply needs to be recovered. And all that is not you will fall away as you collect more and more of yourself. Stop looking for the one or the thing that will finally fix you. Hold all of you that you can. Open. Expand. Discover that you are vast enough to hold it all in love. Release the “you” that’s never been you. Make space for the you that’s always been true.
Power
Breathing.
When I was a child, I was afraid. And fear stopped me from doing the most necessary thing. Speaking up for myself and asking for help. But I understand. I understand. And I thank my younger self. I thank her. She was so adept at reading the subtle energies, at hearing loud and clear what went unsaid, at accurately discerning what capacity the adults and the environment did and didn’t have. She chose to preserve herself and her connections. She knew that she needed kinship to survive. She knew that she could keep herself alive through the pain. And she trusted that one day she would become the adult that she needed. That one day she would have the tools, the capacity, the courage. She would be brave enough to face fear, to face herself. And she would speak up for herself then.
She was powerful. She was gifted. She used the gift of her intuition to make the choice that she needed to make in order to keep herself as safe as possible. All because she knew that she was making the way for her future self to become who I’ve become, who I’m becoming. No peace, no belonging, no pleasure, no love, no healing that I have now is possible without her otherworldly power.
I was so little. I never felt little. But I was.
Little one. You are so good. You did so well.
You are not to blame
This is not your shame
Listen to our song
Wrong is not your name
And I’m here. I’m here now. Now. Now I can be who I'm meant to be here. Worthy
wanted hearing heard human sweet subversive submissive screaming.
Whole.
Did I get it right?
Listen for the answer.
Footnotes:
1 From Nobles et al, 2016. “Pan African Humanness and Sakhu Djaer as Praxis for Indigenous Knowledge Systems.”
2 And perhaps the angels, themselves, are lovers of June Jordan, as I am. Perhaps they sang this line to me knowing the resonance it would hold, as a lover of her “Poem About My Rights,” in which she writes “I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name/My name is my own my own my own.” Perhaps June is an angel, herself.
Amissa Miller is a writer whose work explores Black femme interiority, radical worldbuilding, and the intergenerational kinship that bridges the material and spiritual realms. Her short plays include Heart Like an Ocean (forthcoming publication in Meridians Journal, 2024 Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award Honorable Mention), Her Own Things (published in African Voices Magazine), Breaths (produced for Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco Best Plays of 2019 showcase), and Refusal of the Call (presented for PlayGround SF 2020 Reading Series). She is a 2024 Muses & Melanin Creative Nonfiction Fellow, and a regular contributor for UNSPOKEN, an online publication that showcases the voices of women of color. Amissa holds a BA in Drama from Spelman College and an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University. IG: @missamissaloves
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