Country of Water

I know who I am because I believe it

The breath in my chest

Insistent in its choice

The skin that I’m in

The bones and blood and veins

It carries like a promise

       Have you witnessed the ocean

Moving with so much gust and life

Have you witnessed the river

Still waters bubbling the rebirth of school

       Have you witnessed your body

Its own country of water

Moving against the tide of a world

So heartbreaking     it’s forgotten its own voice

Be still friend

Be still

Be kind to yourself in the gift of stillness

I know who I am because I believe it

I know

I know 

Who I

Who I

Believe

Believe

Believe

In three’s we will come

A drip of water moving against a boulder

Water slow and steady can turn rock

Into a pebble

Like anxiety

Life self-doubt

Smaller

Smaller

Until gone

Let your love for yourself be the water

Be the rise

Be the mist

Let you be

I know who I am because I believe it

I believe I am my mother’s daughter

I believe I am my grandmother’s prayers

I believe I am my great-grandmother’s backbone revealed

I am I am because I believe so

I am because a woman believed in me

What a continent I became

What a country of water I be

I flow and fluid and rise and ebb and I believe in me

         I am not wrong

I am wronged

In this skin I’ve reclaimed

From this trap of this country’s tourniquet

Only to find the sweet solace is a river bed

Its mud beckons me closer to its silt

Small fish and forgotten glass unearth themselves

Like baby teeth

Only one can cut into flesh purposely

Only one does not know what it is capable of

I believe in the air as much as I believe in the fire

I believe in the fire as much as the water consumes

I believe in a higher source

Energetic and wise

I believe in my ability to thrive

This body

       This body is a good thing

Turning two miles walked over a bridge into a family’s meal

Creating poems that become cashier’s checks

Dentist bills and rent

I’ve three holes in my teeth

And a nation that pretends I didn’t almost die for it to survive

I am I am still here still here

I am still here and like the ocean, full of salt and shells

Full of ship remnants and noble ones

I bleed and the sand grieves

I be because someone survived for me to be here

Today

Breathing this almost air

Marching for cleaner belongings

My front seat beneath the deadening stars

Is still a seat

Is still a ground

Is still a home that I can pronounce my given name

To write amongst the forgotten names

The taken and the ignored

But today

            There are no tombstones

Today 

There is no true death

Only life

Only life

Only a song of the living

Maybe even a belief system

With water as its minister

         I am water

I dive into my own currents

I dress my dreams in the satin breath

Of my ancestors

I know 

I know

I know who I am

I know who I am because I believe it

--Mahogany L. Browne