Whatever happens next or never happens ever I’ll know with clarity if not with certainty I had that moment in Montego Bay when beauty beckoned me then held me tightly When I looked longingly at an empty beach looking as far as the eye could see and there looking back at me wooing me a warm Carib sea hues of blue cradling me like a cobalt quilt with white foam lace laid out on the ocean’s bed for me to lie down, to lay my burdens down. Has this beach...
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I first met her reading in line standing by the boxes-of-books-library built in a corner of a classroom. I saw her clearly in Chapter 2 as I flipped pages and breathed hard, saliva-saturated fingers flying off paper sounding like a hurricane coming. Hurry up, chile, the stone-faced teacher said then snatched the book to record its title just as Matthew Cuthbert said to Anne, “Come along.” * I was turning ten and she was eleven, this white orphan girl from far-off Canada coming into my island haven, into my book-shaped heart....
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Because the image of knees on neck constricts my chest and chokes words that want air to aspirate, to navigate open spaces to air grievances because such an image sears memory, suffocates senses and sends signals to hold tightly my blackness in breathless pose because watching the news is not safe, I tell you. Not when police patrol but justice does not roll, not when streets flame, glass shatters and crowds gather in a pandemic, masked masses unmasking a nation’s naked shame because we heard him say it again: I...
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