Blood at the Root

by LaDarrion Williams

Black boys surely deserve stories filled with magic, wonder, and warm summer rain. Black boys deserve to have their origin stories. Black boys deserve to have the fullness of their power revered. They need to remember that they are magic, that “Blackness is magic.”

They say love is like the sea. Because of its vastness, we really don’t understand it fully. But we know it moves with a rhythm, and it’s deeper than anything in this world. It’s endless, and it always comes back to shore.

“Baybeh, sometimes you got to get to the root of things. Find out what’s planted deep inside ya that’s rottin’, and you pluck it. Only then can you fill it with good things that’ll spring forth everythin’ you need in this life. The world may be fallin’ down round us, but best believe we gon’ laugh, we gon’ dance, and we gon’ be family. That’s how we’ve been for generations. No matter how much hate, how much pain they throw at us, we always gon’ rise. Resilience is a form of magic…that’s in our blood, chile, and that’s somethin’ they ain’t gon’ neva take away. Ya hear me?”

“You know, you always hear that we accept the love we think we deserve, and I know I kid around a lot, but love is something I don’t wanna play around with. Because we may have magic, Malik, but my dad taught Elijah and me that there are some things that is more powerful than magic, and that’s love. It’s like what we learned in science class when it comes to matter: Love ain’t created nor destroyed. It just is.”