When the world ends

and your body re-remembers how dismembered it is

The way my heart breaks is a familiar dance I cannot become close to. I know it is a rhythm. I know the way it snaps and cracks and becomes undone. I know the sequence to tears, the moment when moans become groans and language becomes something that English cannot comprehend; but only the body has the capacity and brilliance to keep accounting. My mentors are busy saving the world; only they can. My partner is busy and uninterested for good reason. My grandmother and mother and sisters and father don’t know because they cannot know because if they know, they ‘ll be head here too; and they must live. They must. They must they must. For the children who come next.There is a way the body can count without breathing, without being seen, without being truly a-liv/(f)e. There is a way that the dead lives in the gasps of mutilations. There is a gap in self care, when self no longer cares, before self has thrown in the towel and has approached a space beyond pessimism. Pessimism, a mere skepticism of hope does not begin to map the cartography of certain endings, of deaths untold, the moment when the reaper comes with no warning, invitation or good manners. You did not answer the door. You did not hear the knock. You did heed the warnings not because you were an ignorant fool; but because they were beyond you reckoning with sound, with sight, with realities beyond your native language; yet witnessing that retain a foundation of truth. Imagine. Imagine being so disposed/dispossessed in the wake of joy, in the wake of waking, in the wake of a death with no name, no warning, that kissed you a kiss you had long known as morning, but instead came as her queer twin, mourning. An unwelcome death. But when is she welcome? Can I blame her? Can I blame her for my illiterate, slow at the trigger of change choreography? I was Paula Abdul, when Janet was required. I. Eye. I. I shocked to see my own demise, demolition, at what appeared to be my own hands. Is that Euthanasia is? Is that how she gives up? Only announcing herself at the pain of last breathes? No grace for pleadings, needing and longings? No grace for those who yet have life and love to give? Is the ultimate bodily autonomy a prison unto itself? I do not know. I do not know. I do not know. I just hate the moment when I’m greeted, seated and renown as the living dead. And I hate the wondering, the wondering, the playing in the dark at the crossroads, why must there be a ceremony? Why must there be a ritual of bloodletting? Where is there not grace enough to end me now? An in and out of body experience is surely cruel and unusual punishment? Why use I day twice, or thrice for one trespass? I don’t know. I’ll never know. My guardian angels have long since departed. I must observe and imbibe and accept the death march for myself. I am a refugee who deserved it. Is that proper? Is that what death gives? Is that their/her/his wisdom? To know the death is coming, warranted and on time? I do not know. I do not know. I do know, actually. I know that my world ended and I had a choice, an invitation, to live or die. But half my brain, half my heart, half my long, half my kidneys were gone. And what type of life is that? A half life? No not one that lives beyond, the type that realizes society was never for me to be whole but instead to be domiciled in the hull of the ship, whose weather, whose whether, who climate, whose…..already told me I’m dead. Maybe this is how Aaliyah, Akaasha, Anansi, Anyway felt. I don’t know. The gods don’t speak to me no mo. I am here in the gap. The gasp. The grasp. I know. I know. I know I’m dead here now and soon, too. I saw the promise written. I heard the way it sounded, with broken hearts staining paper. I know I am not, anymore.