What's the Word?
i rescued myself to write this
I'm sitting inside a room,
inside a circle of chairs and beautiful Black people.
Queer,
neurodivergent,
trans,
fat,
chronically ill
Beautiful. Beautiful.
Every single one of them.
And the room is silent but buzzing with energy
that can be felt by a chill down the spine,
hairs standing on end.
I make eye contact with as many of these beautiful Black people and they wait, they wait for me to speak.
Beneath our feet are hardwood floors
where just the night before we'd been in this very room, ring shoutin’,
on hands and knees,
screaming
for help, screaming
for mercy, screaming
for joy.
Breakthroughs. Breaking through,
through breaking
and
the warmth and the heat of the Congos and the Ancestors and the people who could fly
were there
as folks wailed and convulsed
and surrendered
to themselves.
The floors, those same hardwood floors, wept
and rocked us.
I remember reaching down to touch the floors,
swiping a finger, against the grain, feeling the wet
on my fingertips,
peeling the socks from my feet to wring the tears
to ring
shout.
I shuffle my feet across those floors.
Jesus isn't the only one who can walk on water.
I bring myself back to the present and see.
Everyone is waiting still.
I lean forward in my chair then lean back and say, “What's the word?
Everybody got one. What's the word?
Everybody got a word.
You ain't gotta wait on me to speak. You got a word.”
It don't gotta be a pretty sermon.
It don't gotta be a pretty poem.
It don't gotta be a clever haiku.
It don't gotta be English. It don't gotta be intelligible.
Baby, you could make a sound and move mountains.
So, what's the word? What's the word?
There should never be a time when I ask you what's the word? and nothing comes from you.
You are a universe. Within a universe. Within a universe. There is nothing void in you.
I look around at the gods sitting in that circle.
The Hoodoos
that shape and reshape and reshape again.
The Conjurers
who make everything, all right? all right!
The Waymakers
who don't wait
on nobody to tell them what it is.
Dem Hoodoos see it coming a long way off.
The gods in that circle,
Dey know what the word is.
And now I'm looking at you, dear reader.
Tell me here today.
What's the word?
What is YOUR word?
Jeida K. Storey be finessin’ stories, spinnin’ yarn, and tellin’ tales for fun & freedom, but this piece here is based on true events from The Keeping Room in New Orleans, LA, hosted by the Twin Hoodoo Muthas in December 2024.
yeah yeah
Asé!