No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America

by Darnell L. Moore

Dreams die if they are consigned to the imagination only.

Whenever I feel as if I can’t leap over a hurdle, whenever I am scared to go after what I want, whenever I am paralyzed by fear and shame, I remember the young black boy who dreamt aspirations into existence.

Dreams are the destinations we arrive at as we chase our wishes and our callings.

I was attracted to what I could not have and to what I wanted to be: straight, masculine, athletic, and attractive.

Queerness is a way of life people fear because in it they might find freedom.

Black boys and men are read as hypersexual: strong enough to deal with anything that comes our way, possessed of a brutish masculinity that prevents us from feeling, enabling us to terrorize others’ bodies.

Black same-sex love is revolutionary because we must first convince ourselves we are deserving of receiving and giving what has been denied us for so long.

The human spirit breaks when longings so human, so acceptable to everyone else are denied.

The belief that we have all we need within us, individually, to survive is a powerful, poetic idea, but the truth is, no one person can make it through life alone without the presence and support of others who are willing to draw upon their own strength to aid another at their lowest.

I really want to live without having to fight so damn hard to exist.

Depression caves in on you and forces seclusion. It will have you feeling like you are standing at the seams of a life, braver than ever, ready to leap closer to death while family members are several feet away but sleeping, while friends are on the phone listening but too exhausted to hear you.

Black love, shared by so many, is the reason I am here.