PRAYERS FOR SMOKE

Lately, my mind has been hiding in any beauty I can find. In the middle of me or on the periphery of things. but on the other side of my garden, and pasta sauces made from scratch, and the poems of Pablo Neruda or morning dances in the sun, there is a rage that trembles, asking to be touched. and I politely decline the invitation, because I can never know how it will grow once it is welcomed in.

And so I dance. Around an unwanted visitor. around all that feels unforgivable. I dance around the polite offerings of white friends who stumble though rituals of outrage that leave me numb from their familiarity.

I don’t have prayers for peace right now. I have prayers for land to be returned, and for wealth to be divided, and for permission to no longer be asked but taken. I have prayers for the comfort of the privileged to be retrieved from their gripping hands and made into offerings at the place where our ancestors are buried.

I have prayers that book clubs, uncomfortable family and community conversations, Instagram posts, music, art, occasional donations or solidarity statements will no longer be used as collateral for Black life.

I have prayers that we will not trade the lives of our children, cousins, uncles, brothers, parents, nieces, nephews, aunts, lovers, partners and friends for small gestures that will not raise our dead.

I pray that apathy burns and shame ignites and hatred transforms the human vessels that hold them, into a sacrifice of smoke that cleanses the last generation of those unwilling to do more.