May 2020 – tiffany nicole fletcher

Browse Month by May 2020

all i ever wrote, blacklivesmatter, Justice, Poetry, Social Justice

This Burden/This Strength (for Ahmaud)

This Burden/This Strength (for Ahmaud)
by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher

1.
My sisters and I bear a strange burden:
we anticipate, we push back this ghost of fear,
we take in the story of the latest one and we steel ourselves—
we manage the threat of a silent war.
Even those who don’t believe find themselves offering supplication
to the Most High
to cover their sons and brothers fathers and uncles—
cover my grandfather and husband, they pray.
That they would not be hunted down like dogs and killed,
that they would not end up martyrs because of the fears of small men.

all i ever wrote, Healing, Love, Poetry

Quarantine Spring 2020

Quarantine Spring 2020
by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher

What is survival
What is eating and drinking
is it having paid work
is it being able to go outside at whim
is it having love?
How do we measure the worth of our days
what is the sound of overcoming
Of all of our efforts, what is it that lasts—
what remains;
which fiber, which thread we’ve woven
cannot be torn?

Love is an element—
burning, cleansing, enveloping, steadying:
a force,
a purifier,
a solid ground.
An opening, a freedom—a hope;
a hope that our days
will have counted for something
in the end.

We are entering the eternal
where communion becomes greater than consumption
and we are made new again.
Spring has emerged and all of Earth is singing that
we are ripe for remaking.
Listen,
the center is forming now.