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Surrendering to Our Spiritual Assignment

Striking Fear, Embracing Relation

Ayana Zaire Cotton's avatar
Ayana Zaire Cotton
Dec 11, 2023
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Image Description: It’s 2022 and I’m facing the Powhatan River in prayer, asking the water to carry me to new sites of possibility. I’m wearing a white dress I made from Hanes ribbed tanks, an arm cuff I made of armature wire and booty length box braids. The river gushes amid the rocks in the foreground and lush green trees line the horizon of clear sky in the background. Photography: Chukwudumebi Ezefili
let me declare doorways,
corners, pursuit, let me say
standing here in eyelashes, in
invisible breasts, in the shrinking lake
in the tiny shops of untrue recollections,
the brittle gnawed life we live,
I am held, and held
—Dionne Brand, Thirsty (emphasis mine)

Cited in Chapter Three: “The Hold” inside, In The Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016) by Christina Sharpe, pg. 68

Standing Here in Eyelashes 

It’s pitch black. A darkness so total it doesn’t just threaten to swallow you, it promises you’ll disappear. I accept this might be home and patiently await my fate. I’m no longer waiting for…

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