by Ciatta Tucker

 

after Dion Harrison, Ciara Miller and Nate Marshall

 

 “I love America… and, exactly for this reason,  I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” 

                                                                                                                           – James Baldwin

 

i want to keep remembering the sight of fresh pink paint on white walls

having my room painted for the first time, my first sense of belonging

the move to our first house, the beginning of our salvation.

before then, we were 5

packed in a 2 room apartment together tightly

mama was a nurse and dad was still robust and patient

my brothers only tongues were broken english,

with mint condition green cards right in hand,

loud music was normal as air,

we could hold praise and worship in the corner of the kitchen.

when we had scraped our savings to move, we took our gospel elsewhere

 

there were stories of how the sidewalks on macarthur

got so hungry they devoured themselves

the neighborhood was digested by winter

hurled itself back up by summer

even bullets and shattered windows remembered summer’s name

swallowed the tears of mothers and blood soaked polos

called it a meal

once the scene was cleared, the streets of summer starved again overnight

like clockwork

 

8 years later the mortgage skyrocketed,

made us strangers in our own household.

when we couldn’t find the words to ask why,

we punched walls and cursed behind closed doors,

we watched a redline form around our home,

claimed us displaced, erased our names that once stuck to those walls

forgotten.

is a home really a home if the couch doesn’t smell like you? if the walls don’t welcome you

back?

if the floors don’t look to you and ask where you went?

 

2 years after, we called west willow home.

 

on the first night, even with boxes stacking from wall to wall,

we held church in a bedroom.

my mother is certified in prayer,

of hands in the air,

thanking that we have not given up.

 

they dared to raise prices

over our bones,

wanted to break us open

we are pavement.

we still graceful,

 

those who are still surviving this act of injustice:

we stay breathin and living as an act of resistance.

they say jump and we don’t move a muscle,

which is to say

that we are here to stay

and ain’t plannin on going nowhere.

we spill into the street

and call it ours.

*** 

Found outside of the downtown library, Nov 2024.

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Ciatta Tucker is the Program Director of the Ypsilanti Youth Poet Laureate Program. Her work centers around blackness, social justice, and the world around her.

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This is an original poem, brought to you by Poet Tree Town, a Washtenaw-based poetry-in-public initiative and celebration of local poets. Find out more about Poet Tree Town on Instagram and Facebook, or say hello at [email protected].