dyeing: an autoethnography

dye /dī/

verb. gerund or present participle: dyeing

add a color to or change the color of (something) by soaking it in a solution impregnated with a dye.

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i dyed alone. 

i died and made a pact with the dead,

white cloth pinned to orange buckets 

steeped in blues of blues and 

seas of dark dyes washed

clean and uneven 

inked by drops and made

to look like constellations of grief.

spheres explode and you see

the skies witnessed by a couple

impregnated with worry and joy,

grasping at new life

while winding down

a mountain highway 

watching a moon fleshed  in a starless sky

bear its belly to the whole world.

seven months later you drop 

your hands into a warm pail of blue blue 

dye and grasp for the moon demanding answers,

elbow deep in salt. the flesh of cloths,

like blessed and not forsaken souls,

usher you away from reaching

the full bloom.

you crouch lower in the grass and splash

blues across your face, pulling from the deepest recesses.

you reach in and pull yourself out.

this: made possible by death 

by want, by loss, made possible

by scrapping and injecting 

and full madness

made possible by unfathomable wrath. 

this: made possible renewal

a new self, a thirst for color and

seas and sacrifice and creation

and hands making.

made possible a new notion of self 

new relations,

newness out of

a deep heartache 

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29 January 2020

ElectricMarronage Taller #1

Prompted by Savannah Shange’s Archive/AutoEthnography Exercise