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The Green We Left Behind Against National’s Growth
sometimes, our keyboards know us better than our heads do.
the time i knew living comes first before loving was when
my autocorrect changed my “i love this world” to “i live this world”.
meaning, you learn to live first before you learn to love. meaning,
both don’t co-occur in one sentence. meaning, it is either you leave
to love or you love to live. the end result is that the choice
is always yours to make. it is the same way every chicken that scatters
my grandmother’s grave reminds me often. of the choice i made to
stomach eggs and feathers at christmas. my dad said there
are more things to worry about other than that. he says
to worry about how much our sunglasses had made us
forget how green the world was. i said what’s green? he said
green was a color in the world his grandson —my son— may
never get to see.

my younger sister is eight, but she knows about everything
that unmakes the sea. sometimes, i wonder if she isn’t
growing into the doorway of a storm; into the mouth of
the earthquake that might sink the tomorrow she has always
been promised she would see. the truth is that we all have
our thumbprints on the body of our own doom. like how
every single time i open a car door means i’m poisoning
the earth. forensics said Miami was the first to die.
forensics said Osaka was the first to sink. a neighbor
said we are safe in africa. as if we don’t live on earth first
before we live in a country. as if when the earth gets browned,
it will handpick its doom by the color of our skins.
as if when the earth gets warm, we will be protected by
the skins of our forefathers that had drowned in the sea.
as if we hadn’t cut down trees and replaced them with our
homes. as if the storm would call us by our surnames
and refuse to wash us when it realizes we are black.
so this time around, before the storm claims my body
and make me a landmark in my son’s memory, I am
recounting my steps back to all the green we left behind.