Day 17: One Year Archives - “Child of the Diaspora”

 I’m a Child of the Diaspora 

I dream of long Ceruleans rivers, Sienna landscape, Forest Green pastures and canopies 

I dream of kinship and ritual 

I long for a place to call my own 

but without my captor 

(I do not exist.) 

A product of abduction! 

displacement! enslavement! 

wealth! 

power! 

and greed!

But In The Beginning there was love 

Love gathered around a fire 

Love in the tongue that told stories 

Love stitched into the fabric that covered me (only) from the waist down because at home 

I could be free. 

LOVE in the spoken sound and in the dancing hips and feet on hallowed ground 

I long for a time when I didn’t have to perform 

The performance is my life 

A code switch into a minstrel show. 

“Three-bones-and-six-Tambones!” 

Like livestock I branded myself behind the ear so they know who I belong to 

Mother Cowrie! Guide me back to the waters of my people and the oceans from which I came 

Wash away my costume 

Let the salt — baptize my being 

Submerse me in the waters 

and take me down to my people who saw the 

death of their freedom 

in the land ahead of them 

and freedom in the abyss before them 

I met a Nigerian family. 

Who saw kinship in me and gave me a new name: 

“Ogne Oke” 

Gods’ Gift 

I FOUND MY HOME 

(Notification from Ancestry): “You’re DNA results have been updated!” 

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