I swallow, all the light
in my cup, all the light and hope
my father poured, when
he would take us out
to protests

It feel it ,warm light, traveling
down my throat, my white
ancestors atoning, my black ancestors surviving transatlantic ships
still praying,  my indigenous
ancestor watching their home
burn down and still building
a new one

I swallow all their light, amidst the sorrow…
I must not coward…not now… I cannot …
I drink from their light on days like today

For all my lives lived and lost
I cry for none of them

for now in understand
What a gift this mystery is

for all my lives lived
I am thankful for each of them

Sometimes it pulsates in pain
and I ask “ is death near?“
but then I think when has it
never been near
from the time
my mother birthed me
it’s been looming
over my head
holding hands with my nativity

There is a smile on
my face
I toil in small increments
towards dreams

How dear this living is to me
I wake and whisper in its ear “good morning dear”

How dear, how dear
oh how dearly I do love
this living

the people, the flowers, my heart renewed by our shared existence
how great this living that broke the eternal solitude of the cosmos

we keep ourselves company in different forms
the space between two stars overcome with the embrace of our arms

I can now see it
I can see the time I am in
I can see where I am in history
the player at the board looking at the pieces

“this one I can move”
“this one I cannot”
compassionate, strong willed, wiser now

I can now see
but what I see is only a fraction
but I can see my fraction
I can see it

This is enough
walking down the stairs as it opens up to a wide corridor, these people, this place and me
as I am –enough

and all my dreams in the bending
of my wrist
all of my heart can be found
spread out inside  pulsating chests
within all the people around me

My whole existence a blink and simultaneously
an eternity in the shared
look, that give my loved one
eyes to eyes endlessly suspended
in this sea of living

over our small dinner table I could be finite
and I could be infinite