all i have to give

In response to 'Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, And Meditations For Staying Human". A necessary read for everybody Black.

“I am writing this first letter from bed. I lie here on my left side, peeking right hand from underneath the empty duvet to type. It is not practical, but it is necessary because I’m in pain again and depressed again, and this is all I have to give today.”- Cole Arthur Riley

…this is all I have to give today.

Sometimes the words do not come. Neither from my pen nor the keys. Sometimes, my thoughts are so scattered, and at the same time, so knotted up together that I cannot force them into neat lines. or convenient sentences. And when that happens. When I am overcome by pain- physical (in the joints) or emotional (in the gut), I’ll tell you what I do.

I go somewhere and scream.

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I had a breakdown during the pandemic. After 18 months of watching my mother wither away, become septic, and nearly die; 18 months of no contact with … anyone. I think I went a bit mad. I even had my own Brittney Spears moment, and shaved my head bald during a manic episode. (It is a distinctly millennial experience to come full circle with understanding towards Brittany Spears, but that is another thing altogether.)

My then-boyfriend, now-fiance, decided I needed a break. And so, we rented an AirBnB in a tiny Amish town literally called Paradise. It was a one-story place with a front and back porch. There were no neighbors, just grassy green hills in the backyard and the occasional horse that would go clip-clopping by.

green hills, and a distant horse and buggy in Paradise

the flowerbox at our entryway to Paradise Cottage.

I remember on our second day there, I went out onto the back porch to watch the sun come up. And as it did, I felt a sob rising in my throat. This all-encompassing pressure and heaviness was growing and expanding, threatening to consume me. I felt like I had swallowed the sun. Like I alone had been keeping the lights on in my own life for so long that I couldn’t even tell the bulb had blown.

I let out a sound in the wee hours of the morning that came from the depths of my mother’s mother’s belly.

It is not enough to say I cried. It is not enough to say I screamed.

I released a thousand howls. I spoke a thousand unheard curses. I regurgitated innumerable swallowed sins.

You have to remember - this was in the wake of Breonna Taylor. The endless fireworks.Hospitals with no visiting hours. The endless parade of death. the relentless, haunting specter of a global pandemic.

I wept hard enough to make myself undone. And in doing so, something that had been out of place for a long time, finally clicked back into position.

So often we are told, blatantly or subconciously to just take it. Take the scraps life offers. Take whatever they have to give you. And smile. Say nothing. Just keep going. tend to your wounds later. another time. never now.

Not me.

I am a screamer. A howler. One who is always calling out to God.

and that’s all I have to give today…