I feel so homesick.

I always think that when I return home it’ll get better, but it never does.

I’m homesick for something that isn’t tangible, and it’s something deeper than even my heart that feels the sting.

I’m homesick for Blackness.

The core of my spirit, my soul, my very essence, and at the surface but still just as deeply, my heart feels the deepest yearning for Blackness I’ve ever felt.

I crave it, I’m starving of it, I need it. I need to be around community and people who understand. I need both to support and be supported.

It’s almost ironic that the very hole that having Black skin in this world creates can only be filled by a warmth that only Blackness can fill.

I need Black people, Black music, Black hearts, Black bodies, Black laughter, Black pain, Black anger, Black magic, Black joy, Black love.

I am desperate for it.

I am a starving child in a white world where Blackness is the forbidden fruit.

But all things forbidden are only so because they are the sweetest of all.

Blackness is sweet with freedom, with love, with sustenance.

Ain’t sh*t in this world like Blackness; can’t nothing hold you like it, can’t nothing cure you like it, can’t nothing stand body deep in your depths, choking, only to give you a foundation to climb out on, can’t nothing rip open its own chest, show you its own depths, and invite you to swim on a blistering hot afternoon.

Blackness is my everything.

I have lived for us and I will die for us.

I love my people more than anything in this world, and when their tear gas fills my chest and they’re sure they’ve polluted my depths, they’ll rip open my chest in preparation to make an example of me, and they’ll see endless Black birds drinking, splashing, singing, and loving.

Through that crisp blue water I’ll live on; they can never take that away from me.

~