Chapter Two:
I woke up to the sound of a leaf blower screaming outside my window. As I awakened my senses with coffee, the scream of first Wednesday of the Month sirens warned me of what I’d find as election results, but I didn’t understand. I feel so mournful as I think of what was lost yesterday (Thankfully not in the precinct I worked because I still had hope for Tennessee when I went to sleep). I watch, now, the rain drizzle down and my emotions reflect it.

I mourn for the people who have bought propaganda at the discount price that was sold at the dollar general tree. I mourn for those unwanted, unadoptable, hungry, sick, rejected children who will be born into a world that claims ownership but rejects responsibility. I mourn the education of these invisible children because what can’t be seen is clearly absent of life.

I mourn for the uterus that just turned inside out for the world to see but heaven forbid you see a child being fed at the breast of their mother. I mourn for the women who no longer will have a say in what happens to her own body but, in truth, am grateful that my body rejects the rooted seeds so my children will never know that I lived in such a horror movie of a state.

I mourn with my friends and thinking people who are wrenched with grief over the return to a time many of us don’t remember but are grateful to those that do and fought so hard to create a better place that was blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. I mourn in the form of dreaming exodus claiming political asylum in my own country which has returned to Jim Crowe against women and the LGBTQ communities while holding the marquee for next election saying that the brown skinned people don’t matter enough anyway so we’ll eliminate any aid so we can fill our fields with their broken backs and dreams.

I mourn for the prisons being built as plantation houses for the next generation of slaves that this election has purveyed onto the citizens of the United States. I mourn for those souls who are told from their conception that they’re wanted and loved only to be born into a world where those promises are broken. “May as well learn to live with disappointment, sons and daughters, because you ain’t no kin to me.” I mourn for that mentality being accepted as fact.

But most of all, I mourn that so many of my kin, my brothers and sisters of Light, are caught in so much darkness that they’re afraid to shine too brightly. I encourage you, my beautiful friends, to not give up even while the mourning strikes your heart with the righteous shame of indignities served on our hearts, minds, and bodies. Without us, that margin would have been far greater and the obvious ignorance would spill farther into this world.

We are the vessels that contain hope. We are the steps the future MUST take or we, as a free society, will fail. We are the eyes that see the changes that MUST be made. We are the hands that MUST NOT fail to act in the name of justice. We are the voices that MUST be raised repeatedly against ignorance. We are the backs that MUST bear the burden of challenging each defeat with a solid stance of support not only for one another but for those who are and will be victimized by these misguided amendments.

The warnings have blared at us, like my alarm clock of despair outside our window. It’s up to us as a people to determine whether we hit the snooze button on our kin, or whether we rise to the challenge that they’ve again faced and forced upon us. Me, I’ll put on my top hat and rise because without hope, there is no way I will survive.