Two Brown Bodies
for Sonia Sanchez for saving a blackgirl's life in Copenhagen.
"I 'spoze there is a time all womens has to visit the slaughter house."
--Just Don't Never Give Up on Love, Sonia Sanchez
She knew the storm was coming the moment she first set eyes on him--he was like that still dark that comes right before the havoc of winds and chaos. He glided between tables serving food while she sat with the man who had steadied her life so that she no longer recognized herself. People seemed to think that was a good thing. She took one look and knew she would, without hesitation, give him the power to dismantle the stability reason had compelled her to build. But she never was good at reason and she never had been good at love.
"For all the women who have ever stretched their bodies out anticipating civilization and finding ruins." ibid
Her uncle had asked her once, in Trinidad, "How you have sense so to marry that man?" He was impressed with her husband and she couldn't tell him that it felt like her heart had abandoned her in some cold, empty alley where she felt underdressed and ill-prepared. Instead, she stirred the ice in her pre-noon rum and coke (it was their ritual whenever she visited). She sat facing her old Uncle, a man who fought for Trinidadian self-rule, a man who drove across Europe, alone, a Black man, in the 50s, a man who had felt the betrayal of a movement, and she couldn't work up the nerve to say, "But I don't have the sense, don't you see?" She recrossed her legs and felt the smooth, cool bamboo frame of the chair against them and sipped her rum and coke. She switched the conversation to Naipaul whom they both equally detested.
But she is far away from home now, living amongst ghosts who fail to recognize her perhaps because she fails to recognize them. It eases, in a way, the pain of life because there is nothing here she feels passionate about. It is easy to avoid messy emotional entanglements in a land where the people simply do not interest you.
Years later she will see this waiter again, years later after she had abandoned her marriage and he would say to her, "Wait, where are you going, don't you know you are the woman of my dreams?" She kept on walking and managed to stay away from him for four more years, knowing better than to let him stop her heart.
Who would have thought it would ever end this way? It wasn't supposed to, he said to her.
His presence recalled Trinidad, provoked memories and taunted her with dreams. Together, two brown bodies below blankets against the dark Danish damp somehow was to save them. But really, given history, what choice did they ever have? Really?
She thought there was a chance by not relying on reality. Reality was an illusion anyway. Full of aggression she believed in the healing properties of a love that was yet to come.
But she had been here once before. She recognized the signs. Eventually she would give in, surrender herself, expecting a tropical paradise instead of an Arctic wind that would freeze her heart.
She rushed in, ignoring signs.
She rushed in ignoring reality.
She rushed in.
And broke.
But not enough where she was unable to get up again, hold herself up again, and still believe that one day...
Two brown bodies buried under blankets
will save
each other
in the
Nordic cold
because two brown bodies
have always been the
equation
of survival
& somehow she knows
they lost the maps
but together
or apart,
they will find
their way,
they will
find their way...
Don't never go looking for love, girl. Just wait. It'll come. Like the rain falling from the heaven, it'll come. Just don't never give up on love.-- Sonia Sanchez
"I 'spoze there is a time all womens has to visit the slaughter house."
--Just Don't Never Give Up on Love, Sonia Sanchez
She knew the storm was coming the moment she first set eyes on him--he was like that still dark that comes right before the havoc of winds and chaos. He glided between tables serving food while she sat with the man who had steadied her life so that she no longer recognized herself. People seemed to think that was a good thing. She took one look and knew she would, without hesitation, give him the power to dismantle the stability reason had compelled her to build. But she never was good at reason and she never had been good at love.
"For all the women who have ever stretched their bodies out anticipating civilization and finding ruins." ibid
Her uncle had asked her once, in Trinidad, "How you have sense so to marry that man?" He was impressed with her husband and she couldn't tell him that it felt like her heart had abandoned her in some cold, empty alley where she felt underdressed and ill-prepared. Instead, she stirred the ice in her pre-noon rum and coke (it was their ritual whenever she visited). She sat facing her old Uncle, a man who fought for Trinidadian self-rule, a man who drove across Europe, alone, a Black man, in the 50s, a man who had felt the betrayal of a movement, and she couldn't work up the nerve to say, "But I don't have the sense, don't you see?" She recrossed her legs and felt the smooth, cool bamboo frame of the chair against them and sipped her rum and coke. She switched the conversation to Naipaul whom they both equally detested.
But she is far away from home now, living amongst ghosts who fail to recognize her perhaps because she fails to recognize them. It eases, in a way, the pain of life because there is nothing here she feels passionate about. It is easy to avoid messy emotional entanglements in a land where the people simply do not interest you.
Years later she will see this waiter again, years later after she had abandoned her marriage and he would say to her, "Wait, where are you going, don't you know you are the woman of my dreams?" She kept on walking and managed to stay away from him for four more years, knowing better than to let him stop her heart.
Who would have thought it would ever end this way? It wasn't supposed to, he said to her.
His presence recalled Trinidad, provoked memories and taunted her with dreams. Together, two brown bodies below blankets against the dark Danish damp somehow was to save them. But really, given history, what choice did they ever have? Really?
She thought there was a chance by not relying on reality. Reality was an illusion anyway. Full of aggression she believed in the healing properties of a love that was yet to come.
But she had been here once before. She recognized the signs. Eventually she would give in, surrender herself, expecting a tropical paradise instead of an Arctic wind that would freeze her heart.
She rushed in, ignoring signs.
She rushed in ignoring reality.
She rushed in.
And broke.
But not enough where she was unable to get up again, hold herself up again, and still believe that one day...
Two brown bodies buried under blankets
will save
each other
in the
Nordic cold
because two brown bodies
have always been the
equation
of survival
& somehow she knows
they lost the maps
but together
or apart,
they will find
their way,
they will
find their way...
Don't never go looking for love, girl. Just wait. It'll come. Like the rain falling from the heaven, it'll come. Just don't never give up on love.-- Sonia Sanchez
Comments
good work here.
i want MORE!!!