expanding.
setting
down
ro
o
t
s
.
it’s beginning to take shape for me. this place and its people are becoming home. i’m beginning to feel safe enough
to
set
down
such
ro
o
t
s
.
to let the little twigs dig into the red ground and wrap themselves around.
i would have never picked this place for myself and i don’t know how long i stay. but it is becoming home to me. this is the place i return to.
winona, those were my streets and roads. we shared the same blood, the black clay: the pigment and stain of my hair and freckles. we survived the same winters: resilient, and fearlessly cautious. i did not fear those streets in the middle of the night; fearless for the wrong reasons in those days.
here, i live on the surface of their ground. i am a traveller given a place to stay. and as the land begins to trust me, it will begin to teach me, and in time, tell me its secrets. it will whisper to me of things that are not my blood rite. i’ll live among history that is not my heritage. i may always be the strange tongued child, but i shall be folded in around the table.
let me comb the last of the river water out of my strands of hair and pick the last of the ice out of my shoulder blade,
so that i may dress in the magnolia leaves and bathe my hair in the red dirt.
we are loved, dearest, so very loved.
