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It’s not weak to cry, Daddy used to say. It’s human.
I think every morning when Ezra wakes up, God gives him a tiny jar of words. He only gets so many, maybe a quarter of what the rest of us do. And he’s so scared he’ll run out, he uses as few of them as possible. Half his sentences are one word or a grunt. Weekends, he talks so little, I bet at the end of the day, he has leftovers.
“You know what my daddy calls it when one person has a head start that the other person doesn’t even know about?” “What?” “America.”
Neither of my parents really know what it’s like to live here as me. To look around and see no one who looks like you. To live with the stares and questions about “what I am.” To feel like a puzzle, pieces hidden and scattered, and always trying to find and fit all my parts together. To see myself not as half this or bi-that, but whole.
“Be strong, very strong.” His fingers tighten on mine and he doesn’t drop his gaze or slide a hand in his pocket, or any of the other Ezra things he does when he’s unsure. “And we will strengthen each other.”
Maybe growing up means growing apart. And maybe it’s other people meaning more to you than the ones who used to mean the most.
If I waited on other people to believe in me, I wouldn’t get very far,
So this is what the end feels like. Like rolling down a hill for years, wondering if you’ll ever land in a ravine, and then stopping suddenly. Crashing. Abrupt. Painful.
“My father always used to say whatever you do, be excellent,” Kimba says. “Whatever you do, consider others. Big moves make big waves. Do big things.
Sometimes we don’t realize that the move we’re making will be the one that changes everything, not just for us, but for someone else.
It’s natural for people to lose touch with friends they knew that young as they start new phases with new people.”
“I overheard you tell Mona you like to fuck,” he says, trapping the fullness of his bottom lip between his teeth. “So do I. If you’re in the market for someone, I’d like it to be me.”
The years fall away like a torn veil separating him from me, then from now. It hasn’t been years. There has only been one long day for us on which the sun has never set. We were never lost, and this place has always been waiting for our wandering hearts, for our prodigal souls to finally, together rest.
“For black and brown girls, the world is full of sharp edges, and with every step forward, we risk being cut,”
“I don’t just want you when you’re strong. I want you when you’re vulnerable, when you’re lost, when you’re not sure. I see the armor you have to put on to make it in your world. I just want you to know here, with me, you can take the armor off.”
Hope is a bird that can soar or be shot down mid-flight.
“Love is not a tidy thing, Kimba. It can’t ever be perfect because none of us are. Someone at some point will make a mess. The test of that love is how you clean it up.
There has never been a race, an election, a campaign, a win that has made me feel this way. It’s the kind of contentment only found when you stand still. When you stop running long enough to run into yourself—to collide with your future and release the past.
