Hey Mama
“I carry the ghosts of five finals beneath my eyes, and I have no extra bandwidth left for graduation, family, or posing. Still, I am excited…”
“I carry the ghosts of five finals beneath my eyes, and I have no extra bandwidth left for graduation, family, or posing. Still, I am excited…”
“When I first opened the newspaper and unfolded your smile stretched serenely above your name, I remembered how you first came to me; seemingly a death doula, a mother, to guide me through loss. . .”
“Doctors never saw it on x-rays quite the same way the healers had. Instead, nurses pawed at my abdomen, mistook it as nothing more than blood-clots. I’m so sorry, they whispered…”
“A shadow in the door, his fingers curled around my cellphone. His eyes widened at seeing me in the ER . . . He took a step forward, hesitating before pulling away…”
“I’d arrived to campus that first time wind-tattered, make-up smeared by an hour’s worth of sweat. My wrist ached from nursing the clutch around curves, hazard-level winds pushing me to the edge…”
“He could see the highway in my eyes, the black-tar sinking like tidepools in the corners. I sagged into the couch and sighed into the steam…”
“I would walk, trash bags twisted onto my ankles to shield against snow melt, until I could rest against the bark, flick through songs, and watch as my breath drifted to the shivering leaves…”
“I heard it first before I saw it: a haphazard tapping, urgent as a whisper, against the window…”
“No one told me I was always meant to lose her. To this day, I wonder why they did it…”
An academic conference like AISES, by and for Native people, is going to weave threads of our Indigeneity into the way we meet, including drum circles, singers, dancers, and the wisdom of the elders.