Post the Sixtieth or Like This

I remember her like this

Black hair, nappy and natural

Wrapped in a gaily colored scarf.

Like this

The way her body moved when she spoke

As graceful as a pirouette

As powerful as a hurricane.

Like this

 The way her laugh would start in her belly

Move through her body

And shake the whole room.

Like this

The way her voice would

fill with passion

When talking about teaching

Or the flute

Or beauty.

Like this

How she always found the brilliance

In anyone

Regardless of the mess left by someone else.

Like this

How her eyes would brighten with fury

At instances of injustice

How she would rage at the racism, sexism and queerphobia

That claimed the lives of those she called Family

How she would rant about the brokenness

Of America’s Public School System

And still pour her heart

Soul

Mind

Into trying to save just ONE brown child

From that monstrous machine that would grind us to dust

And jail the entrails.

But I also remember her like this

Body ravaged by the harsh toxins of Chemo

Hands, pale and peeling

Hair, graying and thinning

Eyes, fearful and sad.

Like this

How she showed up to teach every day that

She wasn’t felled by that life-prolonging poison.

Like this

How she lay in the hospital bed

Mind racing faster than the Hadron Collider and yet

Impotent to speak

Breathing labored harder than the contractions of revolutions and yet

Holding on to life with every last ounce of power left in her.

She told me once

I thought I would die alone

I took her hands into my own

(They were already cold)

And I told her

Never

You saved this brown child and you will

Never be alone.

I remember her like the warrior she was.