I have lately considered myself a dead thing.
Burying my bones before a casket does the deed
Pouring a body of soil into the hole I have dug
And from below, wondered,
Who of the 10 people in my life offered to read the eulogy
While I’ve sat inside these 4 barricades
On extended house arrest
I've done everything but reflect
I am a broken mirror
Who writes on the wall of which I am hanging
But am scared to draw blood from the shards
I be a couch cushion some days
But fail to search for things lost underneath
And I guess what I am trying to say
Is I avoid the parts of my soul that are scattered
I learn to write
In order to piece back that of which is jigsaw
To fill up my childhood trauma
With words that runneth over a holy grail
I learn to write out all of the bad things
And still forget that I harbor some
At bay, they stand like battleship
Crossing over troubled waters
Reminding me of all the bodies in the water
Reminding me that I too, am the water
That I too, need the water
That I, had not drank water
For the first 4 weeks of this pandemic
And I think it because
I’ve already felt like drowning
So could not take anymore alive
I drink, because I have not learned to swim
I drink, because there is a body of water
Somewhere out there still waiting to baptize me
And I cannot find it while lost at sea
So I try to feel it within myself
I learn me to write a depression poem
On the days where joyfulness be in quarantine
Learn me to write a stanza on how this anxiety
Be both working and essential
Learn to write about my family scars
After covering up the stitches with a mask
Learn to write on my emptiness
While keeping 6 feet away
And I realize
That God be a masterful author
Gave me the notepad of clear vision
Tore out a page from the Book of Job
Filled up my pen with healing
Then read into me whole
Scattered me
All over the garden
Like seeds
To remind me
He is the first gardener
Let there be water
And sunlight
And soil
To bury a dead thing so deep
I realized
He made me
To grow.
A Bronx native born and raised, Lyrical Faith (birth name, Imani J. Wallace) is a Black American educator, activist and award-winning international spoken word poet who believes in a future for her world, much bigger than she can see.
She is a 2019 recipient of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs “Bronx Recognizes It’s Own” Award in the category of Spoken Word, the 2016 Syracuse University Martin Luther King Jr. Unsung Hero Awardee, and the 2015 Syracuse University Poet of the Year.
She is an alumna of New York University, where she received her M.A. in Higher Education and Student Affairs with a focus in Social Justice, and an alumna of Syracuse University where she received her B.S. in Public Relations and Sociology. Through her poetry, she strives to inspire, educate and advocate for intersectional and institutional issues by merging the arts and activism with a faith-based worldview.
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