Write To Freedom

Can you imagine the feeling of freedom?

Like being free?

That's what it feels like to know what my goal is in this lifetime: To tell stories.

Telling stories is a #blackass tradition stretching as far back as Khemet and Queen Nzinga.

Telling stories is how we survive, how we connect, and how we thrive.

My first expression was in a 99 cent store diary. Telling those rosy pink pages who was my newest crush.

Since then, all I've ever done is write, and read, and write, and read some more.

I have centered survival so profoundly that I burst with stories from 1998 I never got to tell!

From poems, I wrote but have only seen the inside of dusty boxes.

I cannot explain the freedom and the honor it feels to slip into the same tradition as Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, and others.

It feels like a shoe that was tailored just for me.

Like the first bite of ripe mango on a hot summer day.

It's like hearing my ancestors sing in harmony. In bittersweetness.

I give honor to my late grandmother Almeta, who seems to be right next to me...pushing my pen.

- Cris