A Good Friday Reflection

Ethan was an artist, but by the time he came to us at Joseph's House he was ready to relinquish that part of his past. He refused to create and had in fact gotten rid of most of his work. At his memorial, his best friend, another artist, told us that Ethan had been the Michaelangelo of our time. His work was ethereal, romantic, stunning. And gone. The art is gone. No one knew why and Ethan would not speak of it.

It was early on in my time at Joseph's House and I was still trying to get to know everyone. Ethan and I got into a conversation about his art and a little bit about why he had stopped. He asked if I was an artist and I laughingly said no, but confessed that I was a writer. I hadn't voluntarily written anything of worth in a long time, though. I had stopped and wasn't sure if I would start again. I blamed it on writer's block and he nodded. "I understand that feeling," he said.

A few weeks later, I was giving him his afternoon pills. By then, we we were quiet friends and we had not revisited the art conversation. Everyone pushed him to draw, and I just wanted to be with him. I turned to leave and he called me back in the room.

"You should keep writing," he said. "You are too young to stop."

He got quiet and I saw him grow pensive.

"You may lose part of yourself if you stop."

I think that Ethan knew that while writer's block may have genuinely played a part in my decision, a bigger factor was fear. I had always enjoyed writing until I got to college and English professor after English professor rattled my confidence. I still journaled, but that was private. I did not want to offer my true self through writing to anyone else. Not when it could be rejected and taken a part. I would be like Emily Dickinson and my writing could be discovered after my death. But Emily died in part because of her depression. So Ethan encouraged me instead to be what he for some reason was not able to be. And today as I remember his death, and the death of my Savior, I am grateful for everyone who has quietly, gently listened to my fears and then pushed me to be brave.

In honor of the promise I made Ethan to keep writing, here is the first poem I wrote after that quiet conversation. It is based on an experience with another incredible Joseph's House resident and is still untitled, so if you have a title suggestion,  please feel free to let me know. It is a work in progress, but I think Ethan would like it.

I was scared of you --

no, not of you, but the death you were entering,

the death filling the room and touching me in ways I had never experienced --

but I had been taught to fear you, 

fear your sickness, 

fear what you could do to me.

I knew how to fear,

how to distance your mortality from mine,

so when I sat with you 

I automatically did that.

I told myself 

that I was scared of you.

It took all my courage to reach for your hand,

expecting you to push me away,

to lash out in anger and resentment.

But you took my hand, 

you took my spirit,

and you held it in a grace of tenderness that I knew,

knew in a way that was deep and intimate and old.

My hand, my spirit, knew you.

We had touched before.

I knew you.

And when I looked down,

when I gathered enough strength from you 

to see the truth that I already knew,

I saw why.

The brown of my skin flowed seamlessly 

into the brown of yours,

the color ebbing and rising from your skin to meet the subtle shades of gold and pink in mine 

that I can never seem to match when I look for makeup.

I had never met my brown in anyone else,

not in my mother, not in my father, 

not in Africa or the Pacific or any of the states I have been.

Only in you. 

Only in you.

And the longer you held me,

the more I remembered.

I remembered how we were once unified through the drumbeats of communal living,

with the rhythm of sunsets and sunrises 

as our shared breath.

I remembered you teaching me how to live for myself 

and for others,

for our people and for the earth,

for our ancestors and for the children that were never born.

I remembered you holding me as our home became our nightmare,

as other browns that did not match ours 

overlooked how special it is, 

how rare and holy it is, 

to hold in your hand a spirit that is the same.

You held my hand until the very last moment,

until we were chained,

until we were beaten,

until we were forced, yanked, pulled screaming and aching 

a part.

And still my brown longed for the feel of yours,

in the cargo of ships flowing with blood.

In waters that could not wash away the memory of brutality.

In town squares where the color of my skin made me an object.

Don't they know that our brown is priceless?

Don't they know that there is no value large enough to pay for the shade of my skin that is not replicated anywhere else in Creation 

but in your arms?

I tried to remember you.

I fought to remember.

I burned houses, murdered "masters."

I ran and poisoned. 

No one else matched my brown 

and slowly my brown changed until 

I did not even recognize it.

A foreign climate made me lighter.

Rapes and oppression made me darker. 

I began to fear that you would not recognize me 

and I grew ashamed.

Ashamed of the lies that stole 

my dignity, my innocence, 

my beauty, my strength.

But I still fought to remember you, 

to regain that which was ours.

I labored under sharecroppers. 

I established schools. 

I rode in the front of the bus.

I marched for non-violent revolution.

I watched crosses burn in my yard.

I missed you.

I fought and fought until 

I forgot why I was fighting.

That it was all out of my soul's desperate longing for you.

For my perfect match.

I left the ghettos hoping to find you.

I got an education trying to learn where you were.

I returned to Africa to search for you.

But it is hard to find someone when you don't even remember that you are looking for him,

when all your life "Black" has been ugly and inferior 

and your spirit revolts at that lie but doesn't know that someone's brown matches yours so beautifully 

that once more

you get the rivers again,

you get the singing again,

you get the dancing and the joy and the companionship that sustains even across continents, oceans, plantations, projects, 

and generations

and generations

and generations of violence.

Only you matched me.

Only you.

And in that room, at your bedside,

your brown reminded my brown of its identity.

Your brown remembered.

We were reunited.

We were finally reunited.

But the next day when I came,

I found that once again they had taken you from me. 

They killed you with their diseases.

They said that you were not human enough to save.

They used you and discarded you,

not seeing, or perhaps seeing but not caring,

how special it is,

how rare and holy it is, 

to hold in your hand a spirit that is the same.

Haven't we done enough penance for our crimes?

Haven't we suffered enough?

Don't they know that our brown is priceless?

Don't they know that there is no value large enough to pay for the shade of my skin that is not replicated anywhere else in Creation but in your arms?