By : Alula Hussen
5 min read
A young black boy learned how to swim
At the age of nine
By ten his arms and legs
Would swing lithe
He pulled the strength of his body down each length of twenty five
Chlorine seeped into his dark, knotted curls, browning the ends; breaking skin out into hives
But he enjoyed the power held in conquering the water, an ocean’s worth of world available to him now to survive
his body hurdling off of blocks and diving boards before he willed it to rise
Undulating under small waves as his own tribute to ancestors in the Nile, he felt he’d arrived
Sometimes he reckoned his whole life an exercise
In staying afloat
Or maybe trying not to get caught in the debris of mental demise,
a flotsam of overwrought thoughts as he paralyzed
His voice tended toward drowning when his thoughts dived
Its resonance sunk even as its rhythm jived
Into every surface;
He spoke into walls, couches, lamps, his low tone garbled and became a room’s furnish
Left struggling to breathe through the heat
of his embarrassment’s furnace
He used to hate the sounds emitted when he attempted to speak,
Nary a note landed with the impact that others burnished
Smoke would deepen the low end, but cut the highs of his mix; on recordings, his attitude came across Curt-ish
He started talking to himself.
Conversations between the various personalities he’d made or inherited would flourish
Fill his headspace with chatter, often shushed before it rose to a curdling skirmish
or let free to swing and sway, a devotion to movement as devout as a dervish
The music of his mind would grow cacophonous like jazz when it’s live,
His jazz as in jasm, virile in spirit
He now finds himself the most comforting voice, lift his to hear it
Originally published in-print in Boston Compass Newspaper #160 August 2023
Check out all the art and columns of August's Boston Compass at www.issuu.com/bostoncccompass
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