HeartLines

I saw him everywhere. I saw his face in my friends. I saw him when I looked in the mirror. I was eight. He was seventeen. My mother’s eyes, like those of the Sankofa bird, looking back at me. My father’s presence, like the whispering winds of the Black Mountains, watching quietly over me. On the television, a waterfall of tears cascading down from his mother’s eyes; the world a witness to her pain. But I turned away. I was lost in my own world, the innocence of youth and SpongeBob shielding me from her grief. That February, the warmth of togetherness extinguished, leaving only silent memories flickering in the shadows as the last cries of life echoed before the piercing shot of darkness. Cries quickly turned to anger. Like a volcano on the brink of eruption, this anger simmered beneath the surface fed by decades of grief and institutionalized horror, ready to explode in a blazing reckoning and light the minds of the present with the weight of the past. Mothers giving “The Talk” saying: “Be Respectful, Comply, and Don’t Resist.” The art of navigation becomes a lesson, a generational ritual which has guided those in a world of harsh realities. That day, I lifted my gaze to the sky. I saw myself within the context of the American consciousness. The light of the stars, the bright whispers of those who journeyed before me. Telling me the meaning of who I am.