Translation of life

Translation of life (Somewhere, a hummingbird)

My earliest memories are of rain

The life giving force of creation

Pouring love out of the sky

The river would swell brown

And two little brown girls would find mirth in the bubbling pools

This is how my life began:

Wet, green and innocent

Full of familar

Hide and seek in the wild bananas

The heady perfume of rain lilies and night blooming jasmine

And god’s low murmur rolling in from the edges of the world

Thunder was our lullaby

Baptized in the laughing waters of earth’s compassion

I emerged from the cloud forest

With the scent of rebellion in my skin

And only love in my heart

You look at me now

Walking with a hurried pace

Through your hallowed halls

Through your world of white noise,

broken promises and secret handshakes

My arms appear full

But really they are empty

Really they are reaching

Reaching for the ladder that you are pulling up

From under me

Really

They are reaching

For the truth

You can take your Locke and Kant

And liberal ideals

Your rhetoric of equality

And television heroes

I have read your theories

And justified your justifications

I have been bled by your cultural leaches

And numbed by the sugary taste of consumption

I have survived in your world

Even though its whole purpose is to tear me apart

Again

And again

And again

I have translated my life

Into your thick and carnivorous tongue

I have survived

With my sense

Of justice

Intact

But what have you done

To know who I am?

Do you assume I am like you

Just because I seem to fit in?

I take comfort

In knowing

That you are faint of heart

That you are more cowardly than you think

Because bravery does not come from the exercise of privilege

Rather, it comes from humility

I take comfort in knowing

That you do not care to know

Who I am

How I got here

Because it leaves me with something

Maybe the only thing

In this world

That I know

Is really mine

Something that I do not have to translate

Something wet, green and familiar

Somewhere, a hummingbird

Seeks sustenance in the succulent purple blossom of a wild banana

Clouds gather on the edges of the world

And god hums along