The Gift of Being Wanted

The best gift I ever received was given to me when I was too young to realize it was a gift. My birth mother had to get rid of me when I was a baby, but my mom wanted to raise me.

One needed me gone. The other wanted me.

Don’t You Dare Give Up

       

        “Soooo you mean to tell me that someone down your ancestry line survived being chained to other human bodies for several months in the bottom of a disease-infested ship during the Middle Passage, lost their language, customs and traditions, picked up the English language as best they could while working free of charge from sunup to sundown as they watched babies sold from out of their arms and women raped by ruthless slave owners.

       Took names with no last names, no birth certificates, no heritage of any kind, braved the Underground Railroad, survived the Civil War to enter into sharecropping... Learned to read and write out of sheer will and determination, faced the burning crosses of the KKK, everted their eyes at the black bodies swinging from ropes hung on trees... Fought in World Wars as soldiers to return to America as boys, marched in Birmingham, hosed in Selma, jailed in Wilmington, assassinated in Memphis, segregated in the South, ghettoed in the North, ignored in history books, stereotyped in Hollywood... and in spite of it all someone in your family line endured every era to make sure you would get here and you receive one rejection, face one obstacle, lose one friend, get overlooked, and you want to quit? How dare you entertain the very thought of quitting. People, you will never know, survived from generation to generation so you could succeed. Don’t you dare let them down!

      Give this to your young people who don’t know their history and want to get weak! It is NOT in our DNA to quit!” 

I almost did something good today.

 

I almost did something today.

Something good.

For someone;

A friend of mine has an etsy page where he is now selling personalized leather goods. Everything looks good. There are a lot of things I want to buy, 

and I almost did,

but I stopped-

I almost did something today.

Something good.

For them.

I almost bought something.

                                          I also almost shared his posts with friends who would love what he’s selling. But then I remembered…

he's known me for about 20 years,

and for at least 20 years 

my side hustle has been baking 

and I've published about 15 short stories, novellas, a play, and a book;

he has complimented everything I have made

but has purchased 

ZERO/

I see a personal text from him offering me a discount on anything I get from his site,

and asking me to share his page.

I almost did something good today. 

-but I’m done pretending reciprocity is optional.

Note 2 self

CASEY

(a poem trying to remember itself)

(a diptych in two silences)

I.

she

wasn’t—

perfect

but in the small

untranslated

rooms

of her choosing

she

held

me

not the

passing‑off

the

early‑release

the

shadow‑kept

story

no—

she

lifted

my

name

into the open

air

as if

it were

light

learning

how

to stay

II.

from 1962

he

did

what

single men

do;

in the soft blur of women already named Easy

and beds became doors he kept walking through

leaving small unfinished echoes behind

children who decades later found a name that didn’t turn toward them

and I—

closing a door never open to me

simply let it close

-me