Dear Drake, Love Diane

Drake,

Dear Drake,

The last moments of this present revolution around the sun are so quiet, trying to find a pizza store to order a few pies from.

We’re all so hungry.

I can’t remember the start of this year, can’t remember how famished I was.

I think of a character from a story I wrote in May and how she was just walking around in quiet until the stomach of the person she was strolling side by side with growled so loud she could no longer pretend she didn’t hear it. She could no longer ignore her own hunger.

They were hungry for different things, hungry in different ways, but she was always thinking of something else to eat.

She was in it for the big feast.

I think of every woman I’ve ever written and she, every single one, has always been looking for something else, has always been about something else, has always been singing a different song, has always been doing another dance.

She’s always in another time, in another year.

We’re at the end of this one.

My dearest Drizzy, we’re at the end of this!

(But let’s face it, we’ve been beyond for a while now.)

This moved beyond you so long ago.

It went beyond me.

This got bigger than the both of us right after jump.

We’re so small.

Everything is bigger than us.

Our work is bigger than us. But we have to be able to hold it in our hands.

We have to be able to let it go. We have to be able to name it. We have to be able to not know exactly what it is. We have to do all of these things at the same time.

We have to make magic. We have to create marvels.

We can’t let anyone steal our magic. We can’t let them kill our marvels.

We have to hope.

We have to love.

We have to fight.

We can’t stop working.

We can’t ever be done yet.

Dear Drake,

I’m so alarmed.

I’m laughing.

I know I’m a little strange in my family. Some would use different words. Some would call me a “moun blan” when I say repeat, “No, he definitely did it. All of it.” I can’t believe I have to say this out loud in my own home. I’m laughing. I can’t believe I am called a “person white” when I say repeat, “They are women,  not liars. People think they’re lying because they’re women.” That no one in this living room can see the tragicomedy of my having to declare such a statement given our own generational catastrophes with men is a hoot.

I’m in stiches when going to school makes me white, living in another state makes me white, making art makes me white, eating healthy makes me white, not coming to the defense of a black man/national treasure/sexual predator makes me white.

I’m laughing:

When have any of these he’s been out here checking for me? Oh. Right. Never. Last I recall, every last one of them is still black as hell.

Black as me.

Listen, Drizzy.

I will ride for you because we are brethren and both of our bodies are at stake, but if you are trying to break my body, too… well, you render my mission impossible.

Because I’ll be dead.

And no longer strange.

Nonexistent. Extinct. Extinguished.

Did you hear the one about how there are a couple of ways to self-immolate?

You could watch a fire burning down your neighborhood and call it a conspiracy.

You could refuse to yell fire in your own backyard because you’re thinking, “Well, there’s already an inferno in the tri-state area.”

That is a fire. And that is a fire.

They are both burning. I keep trying to live.

Dear Drake,

When Krystal gives me life it feels like a thousand hands kneading, the nails of a thousand fingers digging, clawing into my skin.

When Krystal gives me life it feels like walking from one cosmos where there are machetes for grass to another where there are firing guns for grass. And the only difference is, the only difference is, between the two grasses, the only difference is that now I know how to fly.

When you die and immediately ascend, you don’t spend any time— not one day, not forty— swimming through the unimaginable dark of the sea. And that’s the part, that’s the part Rose could never know. She keeps dying and coming back, dying and coming back. She’s on day 39 of dying and coming back.

I’m tired, but not as exhausted as her.

I’ve just been born. I’m so young. I’m a baby.

The hardest, bravest, biggest thing I could do is cry “Who are you,” as I take steps in your direction. Who are you when I approach your body? Who are you in relation to my body? Who are you in this moment? Who are you in this world?

And what do you plan to do?

When— after your ascension— you are dragged back down to earth, you get to live again— more— and ask these kinds of questions. And! And. And you get to expect some answers.

Dear Drake,

When I get home I hear (read over and over again) news that the officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice will not face any charges.

Of all the letters I’ve written to you, how many have been penned in moments desperate for justice, desperate for some kind of societal recognition?

I walked around the blocks today with a person who feels like home. We popped Snapples and served up our myths for lunch. When we parted in front of my building, after a hug I wished didn’t have to end our cloud swaddled afternoon, instead of lying back on my mother’s couch drunk with a belly full of laughter and mozzarella cheese, I sat huddled forward, my phone on my knees, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.  

Post, re-post, share eulogies and elegies and mourning songs written exactly a year ago for a twelve-year-old boy whose life was stolen and thrown away too soon. A year later it’s still too soon. A year later I’m closer to home. You start to think your body isn’t fit for this universe when what you’re doing and what the world is doing seem so at odds. You try to go home. The world, or the officers hired to protect and serve it, keep stopping you in your tracks.

With each and every bullet.

With each and every name.

Everything always collapses at the end of a year; so in certain ways, this moment, unfortunately, is not unlike others. But the fact that any and all small joys have to happen at the same time as constant and repeated failures and absences of justice makes me think that joy isn’t meant to be seen, at least not right now. Right now there is no site for joy. There is no site for peace. There is no site for love. Because there are no reflections of joy. No reflections of peace. No reflections of love.

They’ve all jumped away from us. They’ve leapt. They are traumatized.

At some point a body was shot and killed. Then another. And another. And another. Justice jumped out of the window, jumped out of these fallen bodies and the walking ones, too. So when we call on it, when we call on justice, something else keeps showing up in its place; and it’s wearing a really bad costume. Some of us are fine pretending that the impression is good enough. But those of us who are not, those of us who are not fine, those of us who are angry and agitated and grieving and confused and threatened, keep pointing and screaming:

“THAT IS NOT JUSTICE!”

No, no. That is not justice.

I know that is not justice because I’m looking across the table, greasy paper plates between us, thinking, “Well, that’s home. That’s love.”

And if that is home and that is love then whatever is happening in this country—as it happens over and over again, every couple of months, every year later—is surely not justice.

So what is one to do if this is where you end up after these continually forced vision tests?

Rip it off.

Rip off the costume wherever you see it.

Name that thing.

Name whatever that thing is that will surely kill us all.

Name that thing so we can cast it out.

Name that thing so we don’t have to keep calling the names of these boys and girls and women and men right after they’ve been shot down too soon.

Dear Drake,

I was talking to the artist Walid Raad today—or he was talking to me and lots of other people—and he goes:

“A war can affect color, line, shape, and form.”

This was the most interesting thing he had said all day.

He told this story about a woman who was a painter and would use a particular shade until all of a sudden something happened—a trauma occurred, a war—and from that moment on she no longer painted using that shade. She went to a psychologist and the psychologist said she was fine. She went to an eye doctor and the eye doctor said she was fine. But it was so strange because her studio was filled with this shade and yet this shade could no longer make its way into her paintings.

The shade left. It jumped. It leaped. It wouldn’t come back, even though it appeared to be everywhere and in plain sight.

(I don’t think this ever actually happened, but it’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard.)

Drake, what happens when you have recovered from your trauma, but your things have not?

You did everything you were supposed to: grieved, reckoned, found some way to get over, committed to moving beyond. But the paint in your can, the ink in your pen, your clay, your words are still traumatized because they remained material.

We humans can time travel in ways objects can’t. But this artist was proposing that things still make their escape. A shade of red leaves the canvas and finds refuge in the letterhead of a cultural organization. Or a line leaves a print and hides in the budget of an upcoming exhibition.

Where do the things we make art with go when they decide to leave us?

I think of the love and trepidation I have for the play I’m currently working on. Like a moon playing in the clouds, it constantly reveals itself to me and then immediately disappears. Where oh where could it have leapt?

Drizzy, look a little closer for where your art might be hiding, where your colors, your lines, your shapes and forms might be playing hide and seek. And why. Why have they jumped away from you?

What traumas have you experienced that you think—and maybe even know—you’ve moved on from, but your materials have not?

Dear Drake,

Dear Drake,

It’s very quiet in the garden. When I get tired of writing letters I walk out back and rub rosemary between my fingers. I pick thyme. The garden is not a place for metaphor or symbolism; so I don’t run back inside to write lines about remembering or the eternity of minutes and the flash of years.

I praise the sun in silence: the warmth of afternoon light on my closed eyelids, on my closed lips, on my open hands. I hold no pen in my hand. There is no way to record this moment but to remember in shape and smell and sound.

Instead of writing it in a letter, I’ll whisper the memory, like a song, into my love’s left ear.

With my pen in hand, I’ll write some other story.

Dear Drake,

Nothing but love today!

Do me a favor and love your love. Meet your love for breakfast. Have eggs with your love. Show your love your favorite painting in the world. Stand with your love. Walk across your love. Be silent in your love. Be strange, but not a stranger, in your love. Sing with your love. Dance with your love. Move with your love. Two-step to your love. Read notes from your love. Step up to the questions your love asks you.  Answer your love. Reach your love. Reach out to your love across time and space. Travel with your love. Tell your love the truth. Don’t hide from your love. Tell your love something about you. Tell your love something true. Be silly with your love. Laugh with your love. Tell your love terrible jokes. Let your love tell you terrible jokes. Hold your love. Place a hand in the middle of your love’s back. Let your love live! Don’t trap your love. Don’t trap your love in daydreams. Don’t try to kill your love. Wait to hear back from your love. Wait for your love. Be patient with your love. Listen to your love. Be quiet for your love. Breathe with your love. Don’t breathe for your love. Let your love find breath. Let your love breathe! See your love. Pray for your love. Give praise with your love.

Love your love, Drake.

Check for your love. Make sure your love gets home. Don’t be ashamed of your love. Don’t be embarrassed to love. It’s cool to love. It’s brave to love. It’s hard as hell to love. Don’t make it hard to love. Give your love. Give to your love. Feed your love. Fill your love with love. Rest your love. Rest with your love. Remember your love. Paint your love. Write poems for your love. But don’t report on your love. Don’t snitch on your love. Dream with your love. Make something with your love. Make your love real. Remind your love that it’s true.

Love to love, Drizzy.

Dear Drake,

For how long now have months later felt exactly like this? It’s so, “I don’t even know” to me that a body so over-policed, constantly aggressed, and irrevocably violated could disappear in the blink of eyes, before very eyes, and the verdict will always be that no one has anything to say.

There is no one to call. Justice tells us there is no one to blame.

Justice doesn’t see some bodies.

I read the words “theft of a body” in the middle of my computer screen.

Captive bodies are things that can cease at any moment, like when clocks stop ticking. I wear a wristwatch that ticks so loudly it’s tied to my breath. Sometimes I think when it stops I might just stop, too. That’s what it feels like to live in my body sometimes: like a dead battery in my Swatch could kill me.

I can’t believe that I live in—that I grew up in—that I continue to live in a country that is so intent on reminding me every day that I could die and then every couple of months later that my dead body will forever be just another thing that no one has to answer for.

We are drowning under the weight of this cloak of invisibility.

Dear Drake,

There are several ways to put a body to rest:

You could cry it to sleep. You could fuck it to sleep.

You could do a lot of things.

You could hold a body till it falls asleep. You could walk it up and down Glenwood till it has no choice but to go home and sleep.

Dear Drake,

Mornings of travel always taste so bittersweet no matter where you are going. You eat a bowl of cereal and two boiled eggs in silence. Morning light hits soft and sweetly yellow. You think it’s the wrong time for Easter. Silent Sunday mornings are for breathing in secrets, as in living with, as in coming to terms with new and whispered knowledge. You get comfortable like you’re getting back in your sheets, but you hit the road: a pack on your back, a handle in the palm of your hand. A body boards a bus and lays itself across two seats. It lets the light coat its skin like syrup (maple, not high fructose corn). Imagine a body surrendering to the morning light, Northface coated, drifting off into sleep, so ready to be taken over by slumber because there is nothing left to do but rest.

The I-95 is a liminal space between my home and where I’m from. On my way home, on my way back to where I’m from, I try to make peace between naps. As I travel towards those who feel like home, I feel my body sinking, standing deeper in its ground, my eyes open and not twitching because I am suddenly so well rested. On vacation I listen to the J section of my music library. It goes: Janet Jackson Joe Budden John Legend

The Q train is a luminal space where siblings debate the flavors of lollipops.

I try not to place bets on how quickly this city will become a limiting place in the next few weeks.

Dear Drake,

Dear Drake,

Who are you?

(Oh, I know you weren’t looking forward to hearing from me.)

I just want to eat all the time.

When I get hungry my attention wanes and I can no longer pretend I care about what you’re saying. I do not care about reaching you, about walking with you, about going there with you, about holding your hands.

I should panic when the thought crosses my mind that I could just put my hands around your neck and squeeze.

But I don’t.

Rose always says: “As a body full of salt, let me tell you, it just leaves you bloated.”

It's not even my battle. The problem is, it’s my war.

We’re all fighting the same war. We’re all fighting each other when we do nothing at all.

I’ll keep putting my body on the line for her. I swear I will. It’s a selfish endeavor: If I help her fight this war, she rests.

I’ll rest and eat mangoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Dear Drake,

Dear Drake,

I came here to build a home, but I keep writing these letters hoping that my desperation to correspond with you will point to some sign of my life. I should put this project to rest. Mauve stayed up to make us porridge when Rose didn’t come back from the sea. I thanked her for a full stomach and reprieve from the constant haunting of ghosts of men who never lived for us. We washed the salt away from Rose’s body and made one braid from the hairs she had left. I keep telling Krystal I could write textbooks full of what I’ve learned from the dead. She suggests that I stop trying to kill people: “You know, you don’t have to be so smart.” If I planted a breadfruit tree in the garden today, I could leave and return in twenty years to bear witness to the results of its growth. I have to look at trees when people avert my gaze. I go inside. I go inside to dance alone. I go inside to eat. I think of what names to give my daughter and there is only one. I think of what I shall name my tree. I think maybe the best way to show my daughter love is to let her father name her. And this will always be my biggest mistake, wishing that God could be held in the hands of men.