I question fairness every time I wake up here. Pittsburgh was not where I wanted or needed to be. I used to say that I had to come here but the truth is that I didn’t. Nothing made me come here. Not the decisions: the drinking to numb the thoughts, the daytime sex with randoms, the complete washout of life insurance money or the prospects of not having a place to live. I was a grown-ass person. I didn’t have to do anything that I didn’t want to do. I just made my prime choice of running away. Who would want to keep me? Where would I go? Coming to Pittsburgh was this survivor’s last stand because I was in the fight for my life and didn’t know it. But like when shit gets tough, I run as far away as possible.
I’ve been lying to the world for years, it seems. I’m not sure this was a move of God’s omniscience. I think I told that story to others to gussy up my own man-made madness; to take away my responsibility in making the decision to come here and live in what-feels-like a bitter misery.
But as I write these words, it feels like a deep disrespect to a God that brought me out of my own Egypt and into a place of safety, a space that I take for granted so much that God had – or has, to be fair – me walking around in circles for what has now been ten years because I keep complaining about where I am. I often say that I hate it here. I hate living here and hate why I had to live here. I sabotage relationships and run ragged in these communities God gave me as a response to the guilt of having to come here. So I sit in the wilderness because I have a deep resentment for having to be in Pittsburgh. Until I get over that, I won’t be let out.
So that’s why I want to run away from here: so I don’t have to stand neck-deep in telling God that I’m not grateful for being here, that it was a mistake to coalesce two people into discussing the idea of giving me the twin mattress on the second floor of a house in Green Tree to sleep on every night because it would’ve been the couch of a man that planned to coerce sex out of me for a place to stay. Because once I don’t give God credit for saving my damn life, She’ll destroy me.
This plague of loneliness has swept over me and not even the blood of the lamb can shield me from my fate. I hate when these feelings defeat me. I hate that I can’t just get over how I feel: without love, without an excuse to be cared for, without a reason to be lusted over, without a position to be held into. All of these things we called fleshly drown me. Drowned me enough to lay in bed early Sunday morning instead of celebrating the Passover Lamb’s victory over death.
I’m in a season of intentional longing and loneliness. This has to be God-breathed because I don’t want to believe this pain won’t be worked around for my good. I keep telling myself that I’m not in a place to be in place with any man. My garden needs pruned of the weeds of past hurt and decisions. What I need isn’t close to a want – stepping closer to a desire – because I need to want to be whole before I can appreciate what’s been given. Or what’s waiting for me. I just want to be watered. I feel ten steps closer to dead.
I’m tired of tricking my mind into thinking that this is a choice, that being single is a choice. This is out of my hands. Every chance at a relationship that I bring into my life doesn’t align with what the Creator wants for me, so it can’t do anything but fail. I’ll like them but they don’t like me in return. He’ll want me but once he finds out that he can’t fuck me, that want goes away. I’ll tell them no but they still try to violate me. I keep dreaming of running into him but every time I walk around his way, he’s never to be seen. I think he’s too good and pure for me and I’m right.
There’s this one. So sweet, so clean, so innocent. At least from what I can see. He’s the example of “right”; the right decision, the right type. I’m too dirty for him. My past is riddled with dark shit. I’m too off-balanced and off-kilter to mess up his seemingly perfect balance with God. I often joke that I would “ruin” his life. I’m really not when I say that. Ain’t no way our opposites would ever attract. The barrier between our closeness is that thick. Because if the Creator is indeed fair and just, making me and him work would render Her own words and power to be moot.
This is ‘lover’s dread’. I want to blame everyone else but me for it. I want to blame the men of the past for soiling me so bad to the point of destruction. I’m destroying myself as I write this, which I am because I don’t want to be weighed down by these feelings. These feelings hit me last night and remain here with me, even in this moment, as I thought reading God’s word would ri me of them. It failed. I couldn’t focus. My eyes are heavy but crying ain’t in my repertoire. I feel like I can’t, especially on a date like today. On this day, we celebrate when death is swallowed up by victory. When one thing we thought was dead and gone comes back alive and with a greater purpose. Death has lost its sting.
Death still stings. The death of my Dad still stings. I wouldn’t be in his place of dread if he was still here, conflating mistakes with poor decisions because they rendered the same result: leaving me a crimson stain unable to be washed clean.
I call the last row of pews in the church, the “sinner’s pew”. In a church, sitting in the last row allows you to hide. You can’t be seen. You can full of people duck out the front doors once you’re overwhelmed with guilt. It ain’t about being seen, ain’t about feeling the reverberation of the music. You ain’t distinguished, qualified or a person of high standing in the community so your seat ain’t reserved. You just are there because, in truth, you have nothing left to lose.
The last row of pews is for those who feel like they have no other place to go. This place is your last resort. Everything — and everywhere else — and every other person — has failed. You heard that this place called a sanctuary is where miracles happen, where prayers are lifted up and answered. A place where God takes attendance to make sure Her best and brightest are ready to learn from Her.
You’ve been a truant. You’re only here so you don’t get expelled from God’s love and care.
God calls on you. You briefly raise your hand. Just to be counted. Some dude waxing off on the corner warned you that if you didn’t know God, you would get left. Left where? Pain, anguish, fire, decay and destruction. Little does he know that you’ve been there and done that. You wouldn’t be sitting on this wooden slab if everything was peaceful, if things weren’t falling apart. They tell you to run to God when it does. So that’s why you’re here.
It can be lonely back here. No one wants to acknowledge each other. There’s shame that comes with dragging your lifeless body to God’s feet. Shame in knowing that others will know that you were on your knees. It’s confirmation that you’ve really fucked up. You don’t dare have a witness to your weakness. You didn’t want to be in the club for delinquents.
“They continued to commit evil in the sight of the Lord”
Continued evil. An hour or more worth of evil. Beat one of your children to a pulp -levels of evil. A child that wanted to go home. He told them that, on the ground, as they mocked him. Begged him to keep resisting so they could break his arms. They said that. “I’ll break your fucking arms”. Hoped he’d get stomped out. He did. On camera. For the world to see. They didn’t know that. Maybe You did. Maybe You orchestrated this moment to happen in the where’s and how’s because something so evil had to be stopped.
I just hate that You use your children this way. That omnipotence of You strikes early and often and ugly. I don’t want to put this on You, I really don’t. We do evil completely independent of You, I know. I’m in Judges right now. I know what it’s like to watch Your creations act like they weren’t manufactured to do good works. But eventually they cry out to You because they’ve seen the error in their ways. You raise up one of your best and brightest to save them from themselves. Then peace. There is always peace. Until the end of the book, when the people had no king and did as they saw fit. You had enough. So you raised a king.
Then you raised a King of Kings who got beaten to a pulp to prove a point. Beaten by folks in the finest wears of a corrupt system. Threw rocks at him and hoped he’d get stomped out. Like Tyre.
He’s one of Your children. Just like Jesus.
This is trash and You know it.
Evil in your eyes continues to happen. Evil in mass form. Evil in corrupt systems and structures. Evil in kinfolk. What got into those children of Yours? That badge activates their privilege to justify their thug. I first saw the Vans on Tyre’s feet. The skinny jeans, the hoodie. Very much from-around-the-way. Cousin or brother or first date or neighbor or coworker-around the way. He was one of ours. One of Yours. He wanted to go home. He yelled for his mother. He just wanted to get home. He says he didn’t do anything wrong. I’m looking in the face of a child of Yours that’s scared.
Home. That’s safety from fear. He didn’t make it. I know he was running there. Where he was – at the mercy of generals orchestrating evil in the vein of their lord – wasn’t safe. He didn’t make it home. By the hands of folks who continued to do evil in the eyes of the Lord.
We know in Scripture that eventually You kicked evil doers out on the Promised Land. Are You ready to repeat some history? In ways, I don’t want you to. If I believe that You can raise any and all things from the dead then you can redeem any and all of Your children. Even the ones that beat another of Yours to death. I pray that their spirits are ripped and torn. I pray that their hearts won’t beat the same again. I pray that they fear for their own damnation. I pray that they call out to You in repentance. A justice system made of human hands ain’t set to save them now. A judge raised up to do what’s just and fair will, by Your willing, defeat evil and bring peace.
All for them to continue doing evil in the sight of the Lord. Because that’s what they do.
At what point do You kick them out for not learning their lesson?
Are you the cuddlin’ or the clingy type? …oh, you perfect…I’m the same way. That clingy shit lets me know that you love me…
The “you perfect” made me chuckle under my tartan-printed scarf and peacoat, a shade over ten years old. I’m not supposed to be hearing this man cupcake with his maybe-turn-into-something. I usually wouldn’t, my tangled headphones playing the same five songs over and over in hopes to drown out the noise – and cupcake sessions – around me.
Pining for love ain’t the only thing you hear on the last bus route from work. On the off chance I’m not listening to a podcast or those same damn five songs, I’ll hear some lady waxing off about a boss who gets on her very last nerve or a kid talking to his friend about the almost-fight that popped off on Facebook. Baby moms yelling at “daddy” about switching up the schedule. Somebody has to watch ‘little man’. Her livelihood is dependent on that. Clicks and clacks of acrylics or the faint – hopefully – sounds of some young rapper I’m not familiar with even though he sounds just like so-and-so “Lil” and “young” such-and-such. The ping of the alert telling the driver where to stop and doors that open and close at-his-or-her will. Sounds I escape from because they remind me of where I am and don’t want to be.
Here. On this bus, in this city. Anywhere but here. That’s where I am.
…i wanna go to Philly but shit be ratchet out there…
Baby boy’s on parole. This parole officer told him that he can now travel out of the jurisdiction as long as he lets him know. Philly isn’t ratchet. It’s a beautiful city with beautiful people, folks who make up half of my DNA. I still have an accent, something I couldn’t shake thanks to my Mom’s birthplace and my Dad’s decision to move us just far away from a Chocolate City whose accent is as discernible as a zebra in a room full of cheetahs. You’ll be prey in that city too if you ain’t built for it. I think the same about Philly. Chew-you-up-and-spit-you-out types of tough. I didn’t develop the genes of grit and toughness. I wish I did. My toughness comes from falling down and getting back up, but with knees and elbows bleeding with now festering wounds ready to explode. Painful shit from top to bottom. I didn’t want to learn that I could withstand lots of things in the manner that I did. At least in this city, there’s a cushion ready to brace your fall.
So Philly may not be the best place to avoid chaos. Chaos will find you.
Buses are chaotic. That’s why I play those same five songs to escape.
2022 was a year of wishing for absence. Asking God to not wake me up. Hoping the world would usher me into its topsoil. I hated to be here. I hated being present. Presence means an awareness to what’s going on around you. There’s a lot going on around me that I can see. I fear the day that you will be able to witness it. That’s why I haven’t been around. In spirit and in truth.
I woke up one day in May over everything I built for myself and everything I was blessed to witness away from it all. Going home hurt. It was this glimpse into how things could be if I made better decisions and lived with more peace. Home feels just like that. It’s cold but bearable weather. It’s walks to the grocery store passing faces as dark as your own. It’s ripe plantain and jerk seasoning at arm’s reach. Museums with your mom. A newly-existing peace with your grandmother. Native sounds, smells, tastes and tongues all around you. It’s sweet reunions and necessitated first-time hangouts. Kisses dripping in kerosene and laughs laced with love. Longer minutes and hours. Dread when you arrive back to the place that stows you away from what’s good in life.
Coming back to the worst of things was enough for me to crash because I knew it would be too long until I could be around that goodness again. I put in two-weeks without a place to go. I floundered around not looking for help because I wanted to crash and burn. I have this thing of desiring destruction so I can pick up the pieces and try again. It’s better to start in a cloud of smoke than in liquids and solids of pain. Real life stinks. So let’s start over. I beg God for a fresh slate but She hasn’t listened. She knows I don’t want that even as I fight what She thinks is best for me. But I’ve been fucking up since, walking that line to my own demise. Every time I near, I close my eyes and ask to be whisked away from it all. Kill me before all of this will inevitably make me stronger. But I’m still here. In spirit and in truth.
Here but not here. Family reaches and I don’t reach back. I love them too much for them to see me as I am. I know they worry about me. They should be. I worry for myself. I just don’t want them to see it. Seeing it is worse than thinking about it. At least you can call thoughts “delusions”. It’s harder to play off hallucinations. Those can get you committed.
I miss my family. Deeply. I know they care. It just pains me that they care for a wretch like me.
My faith and I are at an impasse. I still care about God and Her Son but it hurts to be around Her people. They’ve reached but I can’t reach back. I can’t read about Her people in Her book filled with stories about how She always has the back of those who believe in Her. That She manifested a Son to be a Savior and unbreakable connection to Her people. But I’m tired of Her people being a witness to my weakness. I’m tired of pretending like I’m cool.
I’ve struggled with the idea that becoming a Christian had all to do with survival and nothing to do with a deep desire to know Jesus. I didn’t grow up in this; I’m not prodigal by any means. I’m a girl who made poor decisions, fucked, drank and depressed myself into this mess that had to be saved by radical devices otherwise she’d be walking dead. Especially since I feel like I’ve become a worse person now that I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit. It’s exposing wounds and hurting myself and others. So I diagnosed myself as a leper and live outside the city’s gate. When I’m healed, you’ll see me. If ever.
I learned this year that there are more fuck-ups in this world than figured-it-outs. Good people fuck up a lot. Some really good people never figure it out. But when you’re that person who people think will always figure it out, fucking up hurts like shit. You feel like a lie and a farce. The person presented to the world ain’t really who you are. So you disappear. Again, in spirit and in truth.
I’m covered in dread as I write this. Dread for my future. My job over the summer called my family to do a wellness check because I didn’t show up to work. Set off this chain reaction. Family called family. I only picked up the phone when my Mom called. I didn’t want her to worry about me even though deep down I do. That’s my Mom. That’s the one person you want worried about you. She’s going to do everything in her power to make sure you’re okay. She did. I was able to pick back up, find work and survive. But I survive, not thrive. The devil sits quietly in the corner of the room where I’m currently writing this. A faint whisper can be heard: “you don’t have to worry about survival if you’re dead.”
I wonder if those whispers are the thoughts that influence my decision to wish for dirt. Being alive clues me into the idea of that being the case. I’m still here. I still breathe, I still exist. My demons are still in the room, circling me like wolves do to prey, but there’s still a chance of survival. I can fight back. I can make it out of this wilderness alive. I’m not dead.
It’s the thriving shit I can’t get to but I guess I’m still here to try.
“… you were the one that distanced yourself and I respected it. I got it.”
About that distance. About your decision to walk away. When your father died, sex became the salve. It didn’t matter who, it didn’t matter then when and why. You wanted to be with someone, close to someone, needed by someone, used by someone. So you did it. Often. More times than you did before death was dropped at your doorstep. It’s no different than those who drink or smoke the pain away. You chose to use your body in the worst way to escape the worst emotions you’ve ever felt in your life. One day you slept with the wrong one. He changed your life forever.
Since then, you hid. From men, from dating, from romantic love, from warm embrace. Get numbers, never call them. Flirt for sport only to cry about empty beds and empty promises. Try to date under the pretense of trying but fail at that too. You didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. You didn’t want to give pretense to something that would never be a reality.
And when you would get close, it felt like they only wanted one thing. That thing you weren’t comfortable to give. And when you said that you couldn’t, they were going to find a way to get it from you and they did. In an empty office space, in the car on the way to a smoke session, in your DMs and text messages. In a kitchen with your back against the counter. That time you graciously open your legs. It had been so long since you felt a man’s touch by your own discretion. You never shook and trembled so much before. You never saw stars like those. Galaxies and orbits surrounding you. You smiled coming down from space.
You hit the ground with a thud full of so much violence and gore. That’s a way to describe shame and guilt.
You didn’t want to feel that way again so you swore yourself to solitude and silence.
“I’m abstaining at the moment.”
“Likewise.”
Is he out there? Is he out there waiting for you? The person who understands your decision and never pressures you to think otherwise about your choice. Someone who knows you can be in when it’s time but doesn’t feel the moments leading up are a waste. Willing to be in your space, willing to care and share, willing to be a rider. Is okay with being your friend. Not using your friendship as an escape from “crazy” or “clingy”. Not a friend who says he’s looking to build a future with his future but then says that she could be soon in the past. Within an hour. After you tell him that you need a minute away to figure out who you felt about him, y’all and us. Because he felt you slipping away.
You can’t wait to find someone who isn’t him. Because he ain’t him.
When myself and others declared in 2019, before the release of Jesus Is King, to pump brakes about anointing Kanye as this savior of subverting pop commercialism to preach the gospel of Jesus, it wasn’t just because we knew he’d take this full-on pivot to white Christian nationalism (the seeds were planted, sure, but this is to the extreme). It was because when you tokenize someone more prone to brokenness than cheap porcelain, you will find yourself reckoning with a decision completely preventable: propping them up in the first place. We shouldn’t do this to anyone as they walk this journey with Christ. Falling on your face is an inevitable part of that journey. A million witnesses to your weakness is not.
That being said, the reality is that Kanye’s existence was weaponized against people like myself, Black folks adjacent to white Christian spaces who openly lamented about the state of being Black in this country. Crying out about a President who got more racist and sexist by the second and the 77% of white evangelicals who voted for him in the first place. Those who, with clear intention, voted for someone because of ‘the unborn”. Folks who, for the first time, are being questioned about their racial biases and racist sentiments.
“They don’t like Kanye because he has a different political opinion.” This isn’t a disagreement about taxes or how to allocate money to schools, damn. This is about a clear discrimination and hatred of people. A violence that stormed the Capitol on January 6th. And if we’re being honest, these folks use Kanye to mask their own prejudices and blindness to race.
“I can’t be racist — or have racist thoughts or ideas — if this Black guy agrees with me!” Yes. You still do. If you openly ignore the pain of others to satiate your own peace, you are part of the problem. If the Black people around you disagree, it’s probably best to not be dismissive of their thoughts. Or think they are the problem. You don’t know Kanye. You know me but my ‘me’ wasn’t enough to convince you that something is really wrong.
That shit continues to break my heart.
Kanye is a parrot for current white evangelical political thought. A thought so pervasive that it damn near re-elected Trump to the Oval Office. Kanye stood next to that man in a time when that man’s presence drove people, like myself, out of racial reconciliatory Christian spaces. Unfortunately it took a knee to George Floyd’s neck, a shotgun blast to Ahmaud Arbery’s back and gunshot wounds on Breonna Taylor’s body to wonder where the hell we went.
Like I’ve said, he’s their problem to solve. That’s their man. But as you can see, the public adoration from influencer Christian pastors is all but gone. He isn’t of use anymore. Or he’s too broken to fix. He isn’t too broken for Jesus. That’s who he needs more than anyone else.
What am I supposed to do with all of this unrequited energy? Explode? That ain’t fair. You’re supposed to stand firm and catch this shit I’m giving you. With consent, of course.
We met under the prettiest of circumstances. Art galleries set the stage for unions quite unseen.
“What is it about this painting that moves you?” The painting didn’t move me. You did. You were standing right next to it, silently pouring out your soul onto it. It spoke to you. You tilted your head to the right, bit your lower lip, squinted slightly in the direction of color and brushstrokes coalesced into something that doesn’t quite make sense.
You made sense, that’s all that mattered to me.
I had to make sense of the senses going off inside of me when I first laid eyes on you. You were heaven and earth, light and darkness. Love and lust. Stuck in the grey of the black and white of who you were to me. You walked away and I cursed time. Our first encounter wasn’t supposed to end that way.
Having a crush on you is an ill feeling. Never in my life did I ever think I’d fall for someone like you. My heart was never open to the idea. I’m down bad. But I care enough about how I feel to acknowledge the real monster of my emotions. You can’t cage in this beast forever.
I ain’t scared by these feelings. They’re real and honest and true. Real feelings ain’t supposed to scare you. At their best, they reinforce that you are alive. To feel love is to feel a pulse. To feel a pulse is to breathe. If I open up my eyes, I’m here. More time to see your face. Sometimes I think that seeing your face is the only reason why I fight to stay alive.
I think you know. I think you know about all of what I feel. You’re around more than I can handle sometimes. It’s as if you get a high from watching me melt around you. You can see me inside of the vapors. I can’t hide it as much as I think I can. But even through that, even through this level of reluctant transparency that I carry when it comes to you, I still want to hide.
Hide with me. We can build a world so dope that we’ll never leave. And that’s what I want.
I see you a lot. Our planets collided one day and now our orbits are intertwined forever.
I want to be twisted under you. Longing and lost under you. Seeing stars under you. Blacking out under you. Just get me under you. You’ll see.
ciara roslyn-james 