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
29 January 2020
ElectricMarronage Taller #1
Prompted by Savannah Shange’s Archive/AutoEthnography Exercise