the third coming
when my mother moved on; walking down the shadows of death i asked her not to come to me—i feared for evil not that she bared it from my attachment to that path of death—my father died as well yet i have never listened for his footsteps in those valleys—i do not think he has settled into that realm—you cannot walk when you are chained to an incomplete life.
all i am saying is my parents were victims of ethnic calamities—i am a child of warfare left alone in this world to fight my battles battles battles with whatever has tried to bury me since their days of independence—the stain of whiteness spared no soul though i narrowly escaped which means i chose death—rebirth—to expire in a public space.
all i am saying is i was born to battle battle battle—with my language and my heritage i will refuse to give in to false empires empires empires—were built on my ancestral land towers of babel were set up—God took its time in striking them down—their bodies left but their minds stayed—stained.
all i am saying is if you make a trip to the ocean and you get to the center when you open its mouth and you look inside you will find a lot of things that belong to me—dying dying dying a timeless death— treasures of a forced pilgrimage—muffled sounds and breaths and bodies no longer floating in deep waters—do not touch the ocean’s mouth—it swallows.
when my mother moved on; walking down the shadows of death i asked her not to come back to me—she asked me to run run run for my life across borders—my fate was in my hands—this is why i do not attend the church or eat its meal in communion there is no more room for another dead person inside me even if the body belongs to God—i am full full full of turning spirits—resisting the tides.
Sloane Angelou is a storyteller & writer of West African origin; passionate about learning of human existence by interrogating human experiences. They exist in liminal spaces.
