I made my arrival.                                                                    in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In 2024.

Four years prior, I was continuously returning to Alice Coltrane’s autobiography, Monument Eternal, and grappling with a new found understanding of a previous home, Stone Mountain, Georgia. Twenty-four years prior, I saw my first confederate flag. In a gas station on the border of South Carolina and Georgia. Twenty-Nine Years prior, I heard the term “nigger” for the first time. It was accompanied by a backdrop of sun, windy breeze, green trees, a bike grounded on the side of the road, and a firm, elongated hug by my mother. Thirty-Five Years prior, I entered conscious or an early version of it. Breathing air from land that I would consider a friend of my existence. Thirty-Seven Years prior, I, not here, was still considered. I was thought of. With love. Forty-Nine Years prior and fourteen years prior to the date of my birth, I was somehow re-birthed, through my mother’s skin, as she was held down in a tub of holy water at Walters Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Harlem, NY.

One-Hundred and Three Years prior, on May 31, 1921, Tulsa was in flames in what they called Little Africa.

The Arkansas River flowed nearby, becoming a burial ground for flesh and desires. 

I can only imagine that the water of this time was held as holy.
A Savior and a curse. 

The only remaining building from those flames was an AME Zion Church by the name of Vernon.
A congregation gathered in an open air basement to hold a service on the following Sunday. 

Even if water was not present, there was a rebirth in that space.
a renewal of spirit.
A silent veil would cover the city for years to come.
But the water’s flow is not silent.
gentle.
or empty.
It carries
And continues to emerge from all the places that I have arrived at before.

After Stone, After Ruins (Notation 1) | Library + Air Collection from Igbo Landing, CLEO | Savannah, GA

Notation | ߀

A song titled “Falaise” plays.
Falaise is French for cliff
The vibration of sound tickles my ear … The violin feels like wind
A hum

In Morrison’s “Song of Solomon,”₀ she begins the book with a story of a gentleman who has jumped from the roof of a hospital. 

He made blue silk wings.
He believed he would fly. 

This is not the only instance of the thought of levitation. I have witnessed it many times.
In my own body. In the eyes of another. In the words of a preface that reads…
“Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way the ground opens up and envelops me” ¹

But
What if
What if we could fly…

The Igbo Landing of 1803²

Beverly Buchanan’s “Marsh Ruins” | The Marshes of Glynn, Brunswick, GA

Brunswick, GA (Study 1), Cyanotype and Van Dyke on Linen. Atlanta Center for Photography | Atlanta, GA

Notation | ߁

In the windmills of my mind
There are marks left from high tide; roots exposed by water; a miraged movement marking time

green and gray and brown are leftover pigments reminiscing a continuous play of
presence and absence

and yet I can only think about wind
and yes I have felt that wind briskly. 

Some days with the sun. Others with rain. 

My hands and feet shy away from the damp aftermath of a winter breeze. 

Yet my mind holds it long enough to carry it like water.₁

Ebenezer Creek and Sherman’s Special Order No. 15 ³

Special Field Order No. 15 Historical Marker | Savannah, GA

Walking Stick #015 (or a continuous attempt at mental fortitude) Walking Stick, sourced wood, rock, incense. Atlanta Center for Photography

Notation | ߂

Every spiral has an edge
A possible beginning
A potential end

When the load feels too heavy
The gentle velocity of a liquid stim
brushing each side of its vessel

The weight tipping you back and forth
Waiting for that moment to arrive

But you learned how to be in
and within 

In and within the edge

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever
trying to get back to where it was.”
Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory”₂

Historic Baptismal Trail | Riceboro, GA Trees sway in a distance above the ‘holy’ water of Riceboro

Notation | ߃

The Blessing Song

As I arrive at mecca
I realize that I have been studying baptism since the day I was born

unlearning what it means to renew. 

What it means to let go
What it means to surrender
What it means

As I wander, the voice of a woman who may not know me as kin lifts my soul towards the sky 

and I have no other option but to look up.
to a large array of trees
standing tall

we are such small entities moving through a vast space towards water
silence is present and the vibration we echo in a distance is not far off

this is a necessary marker for knowing how to return to yourself
even if your body and skin
never touch the surface

Riceboro, GA, and the Historic Baptismal Trails 

Historic Baptismal Trail | Riceboro, GA Trees raised high towards the sky as you enter the trail

Notation | ߄

Realize
there are three birds visiting in the grey above me—a representation of trinity

I know this space 

It is still, although there are slight ripples from the weight of things 

I drift into abyss, down to the root and foundation
a reaching toward, trying to find a way back

I consider what it means to allow oneself to be fully enveloped in the name of salvation and resurgence

Renewal is giving yourself up to something
Not knowing but still allowing

Here in the aftermath
Here in search for something

I am here. 

with large red oak and tupelo surrounding me
these trees, wrapped with vines that have turned brown—like twine, browning from the loss of oxygen

a suffocation happening in reverse order
where breath is not lost … it only becomes

in time …
… just air 

in the land of spirit and light