Meshell Unchained

Black woman, play your guitar. Someone slanted back in perfect pitcher poise, with a leg hoisted at the mark and pelted towards you, the gift. The hurler watches you from a great distance; watches it fluttering from antiquity, skipping through the realms like a stone bouncing across the surface of a lake. Your heart is in the song. Play your guitar. Send your lusciousness out like silky bubbles just blown; mystify them. You sing, like a chanteuse in a sequin robe, with flowers pinned just above your ear, quivering under that solitary indigo light. But you do it your way, as debonair as a boxer that has mastered the use of a musical instrument. You sway aggressively in a black dress shirt. You are fragile too, guiding the neck and fretboard like a wand or a conductor’s baton, smirking underneath your strawberry red glasses, knowing what you know. You render the crowd immobile with each tug of the string. You moan, floating atop the baseline like froth over ale, summoning from the depths the sounds that have come from a line of once captive women, now free – but none more boundless than you center stage. Goddamnit, black woman, play your guitar.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother: I Write In The Name Of Kwame Osei Carter!

My Beloved Brother, I think about you every single day. I feel your presence all around me. I talk to you in my dreams. I think about us often as children, imagining what our future lives would have been like. And life was so beautiful with you in it; my oldest and closest friend; my big brother. I learned so much from you. You are a true gift. I can't describe how much I miss you, your counsel and guidance, your wisdom, your company, your kindness and your love. I am extremely grateful for the time that the universe allowed us together. Your life has blessed me immeasurably - your spirit blesses me still. In quiet moments, I remember some experience we have shared and smile. I thank The Creator for sharing you with us. I thank The Creator for you. I am so thanfkul for you, so thankful for you, Kwame...so thankful.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

I knelt down by the make-shift alter today, the one that the women built in the place where you died. There were three unlit candles standing quietly in the platter, sharing the creamy gold color that burgeoning sunlight holds. I spoke to you. I am so thankful to you. I meditated alone and without fear, there in the place you died.

It is my birthday again, and this is a sort of milestone; an age I wanted to reach but thought I would never see; you left instead. Our Granny held my face and kissed it, saying a blessing for this event that now falls on the actual day of the week I arrived. You would have appreciated that fact. How could I have survived without your counsel, your friendship, your protection? I am so thankful to you. I am so thankful for you.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

I feel you so constantly since your transformation, hovering around me; sharing with me, from your place behind the screens, all the tangible experiences of my continuation – smiling with me at an inside joke, hearing the phrases I speak into my still rooms, and seeing all the things I know. Even now, when we come close to the point where the globe will have made its full orbit, and arrived at that place, that portal through which you relieved yourself of life by your own hands, I can still quickly be reduced to tears. Some memory brings it on, or a song that I have known you to love, or the thought of something that you confided you yearned for but, alas, were never destined to have. There is no way for me to reconcile your loss.

As children we might have suspected that something compelling was upon us. While we talked and studied the overhead sequins from our veranda rails, we were so connected. We would later discern the way of the Divine; delicate and undetectable, like individual strands of hair, but part of the larger design still. Twenty years will come in just this same way and go, and I will be stunned to have survived it without your company; to not have succumbed to my initial instincts to follow you into the next realm – that is, if the universe even allows such longevity. For your leaving has convinced me that our time is as fragile as daylight, ready to be claimed by the slightest shadow, but unpredictable overall. Just look at our Grandmother, who, we were once both certain would light our way into the next world. She has lived three of your lifetimes and now doubles her prayers for you by the bed.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We might be coming closer to terms with the truth; that you have stayed here for just as long as you were meant to. The air that moves around us has heard us declare it regularly; we’ve repeated it like a line that must be learned, and now we’re digesting it.

We came, like a band of thieves, back to the grounds for the first time since the interment, desperately searching out your name along the rows of bronze, feeling short of time. We scanned over crosses and praying hands with the map flapping like a flag in the wind; and then, the exclamation came.

We paused, each one of us, to watch the woman clasp her hands. She cried out in jubilation or exaltation or perhaps relief or grief or all. She was the first to discover you all over again, just like in your beginning and just like at your end. The company murmured that there was no mistake in it.

We made a chain of clutching hands and whimpered as an elder prayed over the letters that form your name. The woman knelt down to place a wreath against the metal and touched the plaque with both of her hands; the garlands were designed in some of your favorite colors and we heard her thanking the maker for having given you to us.

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

We gathered your clothes finally, your mother and I, to put them away or give them away. We loitered at the door for a period before entering your space. It is still your space although you’ve withdrawn. It feels like you. Your things are all arranged in the way only you would have them; the cocoa butter lotion in a big bottle on the shelf next to loose pennies and dimes, a watch, some cologne, an empty potato chip can toppled over, and DVDs in a row overlooking stacks of books. Your shirts and jackets hang like museum pieces: garments that were once worn and kept warm, but now hallowed artifacts after the sudden relinquishment. I ran my hands over the material.

We attempted to work with ears willed deaf to emotion and folded each piece after careful consideration. The woman was standing at the foot of the bed slowly buttoning shirts, gently folding slacks and quietly pairing socks. She sighed every once in a while. I remained silent as I handed her bunches from the piles that surrounded me on the center of your bed. I thought you may be watching from behind the veils between dimensions, and hoped you would appreciate the reverence with which we worked. We loved you so. I crawled across the floor and assembled your shoes. I placed them all in a bag. Who could have dared fathom life would bring us to this?

On the Loss of My Beloved Big Brother

The woman sits in the armchair alone quite regularly now. She takes many of her meals there. She looks at the television as if she can see through it clear to the other side, with the sounds and colors carrying on unnoticed. Maybe she is remembering overseeing some stage of your development, with a sensation that cannot be imagined or described. She attempts to recover herself whenever someone walks into the room.

We speak about you often and in bewilderment still, shaking our heads to complete our sentences; and from somewhere in the viscera, a grunt would come.