Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

I come out of blue water    after the bottoms of my feet swim away from me I come up    I need to find a place to be                                   the air is heavy    I am not dead                         I am not           there is a house   there is what she whispered to me                                   I am where she told me     I am not dead                         I sit           the sun closes my eyes       when I open them I see the face I lost

FromBeloved

I don’t fully understand it
but somewhere in the spaces
between words you taught me of ghosts

That the silence of a story not told but waiting
is no less full – still seething – still potent –
a thickness in the air

We write the words but the story
was always lurking, un-possessed, wild and whole,
waiting for the slaughter of the pen