Unlivable Depths
Is there comfort in being held by death?
Black bodies stacked in the hold of a ship
Where your wingspan makes you a man
Where living was never an option
Where time collapses in the grip of boundless darkness
Where freedom means death, and bondage means the same
Am I still in the hold of the ship?
If so, what’s my destination?
Questions I’d dare not ask no matter how enticing
Questions answered against my will
A heavy gray book with Afropessmism on the side whispered to me
You are The Black. The Fungible. The Slave.
I found myself bombarded with the history of the World
My knees buckled under the weight of my skin
I collapsed into Other books uttering words like:
Human, Subject, Object, Queer, Trans, Antiblackness, Social Death
An infinite void unraveled, threatening to swallow me whole I’d shrink with each advance
What does it mean to be Black?
What does it mean to be a Slave?
What does it mean to be fungible?
What does it mean to be me?
Who... or what am I?
TABULA RASA.
I am the heart of space
A fragment from an endless void
Dark and pearlescent I glow under pale light
Time stands still, everything is gone
Except the moon, the stars, and me
TABULA RASA.
I am the pits of the ocean
Peer into me if you dare
Inside these depths, freaks of the of the night roam free
Or as free as they can be, in a home that swallows light
And this world will swallow you too, if you venture too close
TABULA RASA.
I am the Harbinger
The Siren
The Fiend
The Whore
Atlas
Venus
The Devil
I am all of this, and more.
I AM BLACK.
It was then that I realized my naïveté
How could I hope for an answer to a question I couldn’t ask?
One will get unsatisfactory answers to unsatisfactory questions
“What does it mean to be Black?”
No.
What doesn’t it mean to be Black?
I stared once again into that infinite void
At titles that were never meant for me to begin with
Man, Woman, Human
And I burned them
The ashes dissipated into nothingness
BLACKNESS IS EVERYTHING.
It’s too much
Too little
But never just enough
Blackness is living through death
Blackness is that infinite void where meanings lose coherence
Time loses legibility
And Feeling can’t be put into word
Blackness is everything
And it allows me to be all the me’s that I want to be
I am Dairian H. Bowles.
Non-binary and non-compliant.
Too big for the shackles of gender and sexuality to hold me.
But they still tighten themselves around my wrists.
And yet I am living, in these unlivable depths.
As all the me’s that I can be.
Cover Photo by Katrina Kwok. Edited by Katrina Kwok.