06/12/2022 – A Cornered Gurl

I Want To Be a Lasting Voice

06/12/202206/12/2022trE

An Audio Flash Nonfiction Piece

I never thought I’d live to see the mass destruction of all things different–but here we are. As many reflect on the 6th anniversary of the Pulse shooting where 49 people were gunned down and killed while 53 others had been wounded, I am sitting with my thoughts on just how insane the world in which we live has become. At the age of 42 and as a Black woman who is bisexual, and also lives in the South, fear and I are “kissing friends.” We have a relationship where she pulls at my hair and I slap her hands away assertively yet with just a bit of caution, too. We are warped bosom buddies–our lives entwined for decades because this has “become the norm.” I can’t slip out of my skin to appease the majority, however, if you asked them if I can, they’d rebut, “Yes, it can be done.”

Someone has poured some type of creamer in their coffee that deteriorates brain cells and as my friend’s mother used to say, “Something in the milk ain’t clean.” Who are we to cast down or out those who do not look, act, agree with, or follow our beliefs? Who are we to denounce a community because we do not understand their lives? Who are we to harbor hate for those with different socioeconomic backgrounds, upbringings, and work ethics? Everyone is so busy playing God they’ve forgotten just who God truly is.

If God IS love, why are so many who claim to follow him displaying the opposite? I want to be a lasting voice. When I am gone, affix my words to my tombstone–compile a few of my most vulnerable pieces and share them with my hurting loved ones. When my body is ash, spread me along the Savannah River, purify its depth. I do not want to be remembered as someone who was merely existing during a time when all hell broke loose and lifted herself in phases because living in whole parts had become too exhausting.

Living now is exhausting.

And it pains me to reflect on the past, observe the present, and admit that I do not want any parts of the torturous future ahead. Not if there aren’t serious changes. I am one voice. I say to you now, do not let yours go silent–do not allow yours to be stunted. Pull whatever morsel of goodness you have dwelling within the pits of your belly out, and spread it all over this world.

We are dying by the hundreds. We are hurting by the thousands. We are struggling by the millions. And soon, if we do not become wise, we will all be dead without forgiveness.