My thoughts are whirling like a centrifuge in my lowered head, coming out equal parts prayer and incantation: Dad, don’t leave me. I won’t be able to finish building the bridge from Skåne to Harlem without your help. If you disappear now, my link to Africa, to the United States, to my black skin, will be forever severed. And part of me will disappear too. Don’t sentence me to wander forever rootless in this place I haven’t managed to make my home. How am I supposed to fill in all the gaps in my history without you, without your memories and experiences, your stories, your thoughts, your
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