black women’s bodies

Wandering Around the Cores

| Sheree

I’ve always had a wandering relationship with water.

Called it curiosity as a child. Call it freakiness as an adult. To feel the curling nothingness upon my skin, turning once dry to wet.

I’ve always wondered where the water flows,

why it’s never the same sea twice and

why they keep pulling me back to dive deeper into their cores?

Update – NaNoWriMo 2020

| Sheree

The first two weeks of November have come and gone. Fast.

The first week was all about conversations with people around the globe. And all of them seemed urgent and necessary. So I gave them my all. So that going into the second week, I had to think about my boundaries and start to control the conversations. Work more to my schedule and energy levels and needs rather than others.

The second week of November was no less demanding, as I had to plan a number of differences workshops that were/ are coming up. So this week has definitely been a lot of work going on behind the scenes to keep the shop front neat, sort of thing.

So my energy levels and attention spans have been up and down already this month and this has affected the time and attention and care I could offer up to my memoir.

Two weeks in then to the NaNoWriMo challenge and nearly 20000 words down. And considering all that I’ve just shared about November so far, I’m pretty pleased with the word count. Ideally, it would be good to be at 25000 as it is the half-way mark, but it is what it is. And it’s 20000 more words than I would have created if I’d not taken up this challenge. Win win I say.

I might not clock up as many words in the second half of the month as I move into editing mode. But we’ll see. The aim is to complete the current essay around grief as well as complete another essay about slavery, DNA and my body. So plenty tochall be getting on with and hopefully I’ve got a better handle on my diary as we enter the second half of the month.

Night Marriage, Lowlands Estate, 1791.

| Sheree

‘Let’s feel what the Massa sees in you,’
he whispers,
like a snake’s belly on hard sand.
He takes me in.
His rough stubble tears at my thighs,
as greedy palms, with raised moons,
kneed my belly. His smell is
stale sweat mingled with
the heavy wet perfume of dirt
turned over with my hoe.
His high shiny leather riding
boots are still on.

from: The White of the Moon (2007-8)

Poetry