Me and Maleeha on our way to do some fancy shit.

We went to a Senator’s private party. Good times. 

Lol maybe

If I try really hard I can almost smell the breeze floating over the ocean and caressing me just like it did my fathers and mothers before me. I can hear the laughter of the children running through my feet while I carry a basket full of vegetables I want to add into my stew. It’s the best stew in this village. That’s how I won the heart of my husband. Oh, you should meet my husband. He is the strongest, sweetest man you’ll lay eyes on. He wrestled down and carried home the meat we’ll be eating tonight. I can feel the sand between my toes, squishy from the rain last night but still delicious under my feet. I can hear the men arguing in the distance over who ran the fastest, aimed the surest and skinned the cleanest. I can almost feel the smile tugging on my lips as I think, “Men.” and roll my eyes. If I try really hard, I am home. Not the home I live in, not the time I live in but really home. Back in the time when my ancestors were a free people, when living was hard, simple and fulfilling, when boys became men by learning to hunt food and care for a family, when girls sat around a pot and learned recipes passed from generation to generation, when there were more trees and less buildings, more of our land and less reservations. Before Africans were rebuilding their lives, self worth and country after being enslaved and massacred. Before Native Americans were living in designated areas and the minority in a land that was once theirs. Before my grandmother, the love child of a Native mother and German father was forced to pick cotton in a white man’s yard and made an outcast. Before my father, a proud African Berber man trying to make a living was stopped at the airport because of his name. 

I want to go back home and be embraced by great this and that’s, be held by their story and fed by their strength. 

I just want to go back home.

“Sometimes I dance, alone, to music no-one can hear but me. When I dance I feel the beat of the earth’s own heart rise through my feet and legs, through my loins and belly and into my chest, until my own heart beats in time with the earth’s. Then I wonder if you feel it too, beneath that portion of the earth’s crust where you stand, or walk, or lie, or dance too. Because always, when I’m dancing, I’m dancing with you. “

Yep

My mom is doing this new thing where she is controlling her anger for once in her life. She calls it operation turning over a new leaf.

The other day she lost her state i.d so she had to go through security at her job and it was fine on the way in but when she was coming back from lunch there was a woman there that didn’t know her and tried to convince her that her keychain was a weapon. 

“I wanted to say, bitch if this is a weapon then so is your face because that shit is assaulting me! But I didn’t because I’m turning over a new leaf.”

A few minutes later.

“That was mean. Maybe I should turn over the whole forest.”

One time my sister picked a restaurant for us all to go out to and it sounded really pretty so we dressed up and went.

And then we saw that the menu was all vegetarian and I was like, “Okay, I guess I can rock with this.”

But my dad was like, “What is zis??? Girl, where is the meats?? Why there is no lamb, no chicken, no nothing on this menu?”

And we were like dad, it’s a vegetarian place.

And he was like, “Africans aren’t vegetarians, let’s go.”

On the drive home I tried to convince him there were definitely African vegetarians.

“Name me one you know and I’ll tell you you’re right.”

I didn’t know any.

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