NONFICTION BY EXODUS OKTAVIA BROWNLOW

We Deserve Black Existences Where Our Givingness is Ours to Give to Ourselves, and Your Givingness is Yours to Keep to Yourselves

I

In my living, I am learning that we got to give something back, no matter how little they give to us, first. 

II

They been giving us the leftovers of the leftovers. Made us play dress up with their food scraps, toying to tightly together-it into a custard worth consuming. Made us make learning from books unbecoming from their bounds, whose pages swing like tooths held by the thinnest gum strings, ready to sail the air’s swishy seas, to ground itself below. 

Got us talking a talk that ain’t even in the dictionary but my Lord, don’t it just sound so good to the ears, still? 

They been making us make sweet outta stank because even their smiles ain’t full on smiles. They smiles are scorches, sacrificial pains from the charity’ed-kindness for the somethings notsomeones.

—

In my living, I am learning that there has been a subhumaning of us.

III

Mama strolls down the grocery store aisle, self all to herself, ‘til she gets to a white lady starting on the sourpussing of a smile, and Ma—hand held as to halt her— “Save it!” She orders. 

Self all to herself, again.

IV

In my living, I am learning that our givingness is ours to give to ourselves, alone. 

‘That they ain’t been making us, and that we made ourselves, because when they gave it to us in the first place they thought it would stay as that stank. Not knowing that there was a single spritz of sweet in its structure because all stanks started off as sweets, once. ‘That time, and folks, and folks’ intentions had been the deed to sour it against its truest nature. 

‘That, this is the thang with old fallen tooths—if you bury them deep behind the mind’s bookcase, in place of a currency, something more valuable crops up: freshly preserved pages to make a composition, learning to alchemize from a decomposition. 

‘That we took that stank, stripped it of all its foul fragance, made the sweetest perfumes layered with notes of the Lord’s fire, the Lord’s freshness, the Lord’s freedom. 

—

In my living, I am learning to speak directly. 

And now that your stank is yours, do you find it to be mighty fine? Let’s see, now—hold all the stanks in, make a crisply-wrapped gift of it. Gone on! See what kind of toying, and learning and becoming you gone be able to do with it now that it is all yours for you to keep to yourselves, and to yourselves, and always to yourselves, alone. 

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a Blackhawk, Ms native writer. You can find her, and more of her work, at exodusoktaviabrownlow.com.