Turtle -shaped Sunbeam

Grief

Nonlinear Entrapping

Today sad and cold

Tomorrow a spot of sun

Night falls and sorrow’s way is won one day bleak, the next day rage

The next day a spot of joy; despite it all

I am alive

Too many have fallen

Too many people

Too many trees

I still feel the sun on my skin

And I laugh because I love you

Like I cry because I love you

Nature’s way of knowing itself; Ecology

We are part of it too

We could be

We would be

If they could let us be

Industrial man can’t build an oldgrowth forest

Can’t

Can’t be braver than nature

Brave is nature

Can’t be still as the trees

Swaying, gentle The industrial man hopes to preclude That nature can Tort lived outside Away with industry’s man

As much as they could

As much as any of us could try They believed

Weelaunee called and Tort answered Their smile the day they first shared the ink

Shaped like a flag

Above their heart

Flesh-bound with their love of the forest of that great oak tree

“Nobody had to die for this”

We say that all the time

Forgetting that powerful capitalists

Truffle hogs ever-sniffing

Believe someone should die, blood on their face for another dime

Ecological grief is in all of us; knowing that everything is connected, that all of living relates to the next. One small portion of the world and life in the world is part and parcel to the largest thing you could possibly imagine—to the sea, to the sky, to the sweeping lands. The same factors that ecology is up against, that mother earth is up against, are the factors that oppress us socially.

We are just as bound by our grief as we are bound to this earth.

Before the raids, there was a sense of love, beauty, community, and culture. What doesn’t make sense is how anyone could murder someone because of this, even when considering the police. They killed a climate activist? They killed my friend? How could they come into the forest and not notice that what we were building was love? And I pause to remind myself that love is their greatest threat. I see why, to them, destruction is the only way forward in knowing the abundance we grew within the community of the Weelaunee Forest. But to them I decry: you can’t destroy love—not with bulldozers, not with arrests, not with guns.

A morning dove coos, a kestrel cries. I think of you, Tortuguita.

The sun greets my skin, and beside me I see Tortuguita’s spirit. I hear their contagious laugh, I see their brimming smile. The sunbeams twist and bounce as their curls did. I remember the light that surrounded them. The light that infected us all. I feel it on my skin. Warm, hopeful, brave.

Affirming that I am here, I am one leg of the millipede that is this movement. Crawling, determined, one with the earth. Easily perceived to be harmful by those in power. Those unable to witness beauty were it held like a rose beneath their nose.

As they continue their destruction, somehow in our grief we strengthen. Our empathy for each other grows. Our cleverness is required. But in this tailspin of loss, where do I look for the right words to encapsulate something as buoyant and radical and illustrious as the life of our friend Tortuguita?

I look to the trees of the Weelaunee, who stand still and protect the loss. Protect the memories.

I look to my friends, comrades, who chat on the phone. Tort had the funniest Signal names: three raccoons in a trenchcoat, as I first knew them. At least two smiles per joke, relieving us even here as we grieve you. We laugh, we feel you tug at our humor through the veil. We feel you here as we howl into the night, candles burning for you, tears flowing for you, wails roaring for you. We gather to fathom that you could be gone and then that you are. We feel you here as we throw caution to the wind, smoking another cigarette.

I look to the earth, where across its unmatched beauty people are crying for you, Tort. As they cry for this earth, for Tyre Nichols, for all those taken and murdered by the police. For doing nothing. Or for being too beautiful, too impactful in their love.

As we cycle through waves of grief after waves of grief with each tree, mountain, water source we lose to greed, to power, to hate and control we cry.

But for us, knowing what is at stake, we remember there are two ways to cry. The cries that clog our throats and grip our spirits as we mourn and the cries of that sorrow’s dear brother, anger, that rip across our tongues loud enough to reach the next realm:

WE WILL CONTINUE YOUR FIGHT YOUR MEMORY WILL NEVER DIE NOR WILL THE FOREST NOR WILL THE FOREST!

I remember talking with Tortuguita. We were sitting along the barricades, pushed aside by ants, at the mouth of Weelaunee People’s park. It was a hot late summer’s day. They strode up to me, their camo shirt flapping open, curls dancing in the wind, their laughter encapsulating the furthest reaches of their aura, giving sound to something almost unseeable.

We talked about community we talked about trust. How do we truly find ways to connect when security culture and the state posture their tactics to sow fear for each other in our hearts.

Tort gave me a wry smile. We must believe we can trust each other. With trust comes happiness, joy, ideations, feelings that can change the world.

Just as easily as the stress can poison, we can heal. We heal with trust. And in my experience with Tort, a dose of sunshine, an easysmoked spliff and a moment with the piano in the gazebo could build a bridge in under thirty minutes. Welcome to the forest, comrades.

This spirit of Tort changed the dynamic of the forest. All of a sudden we were hustling not only to defend the forest, but to create the world we believe we deserve for our collective gain and our respective joys. Imagine how many people we could feed if we had a big kitchen? Imagine if we had enough art out here that nobody feared the police destruction? And so we created. And so we built, and now we hold a movement full of more trust and more love.

As Tort would have felt for any of us, we feel rage. As we all feel for each tree we remember rage is a useful feeling. May it show us what we truly love. May the grief, which perhaps is love with nothing visible to attach to, teach us that what we value most is each other. That the trees, too, are our families. That they are the true conductors of the land. Knowing it. Being it. In Tort’s name we must continue to protect it.

We wouldn’t be here without you, Tort.

I trust you still. Through the facade of life and death, I feel you trust me too. In dark hours, as we grieve, the smallest turtles appear. They flop off a log, they reappear on the next, they show us they are not one but many. A multiplicity of Tortuguitas. You are all in our spirits now. If the bonds weaken, may you puppet that we trust each other again. May you remind us we are strong. May we never forget to love like you did. To share like you did. Abundantly, without judgment, with the hopes of a better world overwhelming the hate icons in each curse-ed greenback.

While I yearn for recourse from grief, it is nowhere to be found. Instead, I fight. I cry. I scream. I search for ways to integrate my grief with my peace. All this pain and death met with such frigidity such hate. The city says they’ll keep razing the forest even though it’s illegal. There is no room for surprise in our watery eyes. They are not here for us. I hold the hands of my friends as they cry mighty tears. I am my own friend as I am yours.

I am those I love, as empathy holds us entwined with loss.

Gathering grieving comforts from those who spend each day believing … may we need to grieve just a little less.

Protect the forest. Protect our future. Protect our community from 382 acres of grief. Protect us from violence expanded, from hate compounded, fascism rewarded.

Protect us like the trees do.

Back in December, the grief for the trees was enough for us. The grief of the camps, the rhythms, the spirit of the first go. It was enough. We were holding each other in that grayness. Plucking thru piles, plucking thru dust.

Torn apart because it could be. Because the state plays vicious games. Nothing alive is sacred. Only property to them holds value. So the police came and slashed each tent and tarp and flag. They came back with loaded guns.

They surrounded a small sleeping turtle resting between actions, of slow, assured success.

And they opened fire

They opened fire

They opened fire

They opened fire

They opened fire

They opened fire

They opened fire

They opened fire

They opened fire

THEY OPENED FIRE

THEY OPENED FIRE

THEY OPENED FIRE

THEY OPENED FIRE

THEY OPENED FIRE

To be sure they had murdered our friend.

When we ask of the lessons of the movement, of the trees, who better could answer in more lightness, hope, and meaningful context and creativity than our fallen comrade Tortuguita?

Could these robots of the state have possibly known what martyr they chose? Was it their brown skin that made the trigger that much easier to pull? Did they look at them before they shot them? Or did they murder, blindly, through the thin walls of their tent? Was it their racism that killed them? Sent to the forest with the imperative to kill? Autopsy results say Tort was sitting, legs crossed, hands raised. The police shot them 57 times anyway.

The forest defender skirts the status quo asks questions that force our movement to grow. The mainstream attacks these caught ones for being from another state: colonial reasoning. This “state” is my home; I’m tangled up in every corner. Spooling in love and loss and history. I don’t have the peace to sit in those woods. But my far-traveled friends in the forest, the nomad comrades, met the needs of the Weelaunee. Searching for a place for their purpose as our woods, this home, searched for guardians. As we, the people of Atlanta, take moments to recharge. Grateful for the shift in guards.

All my brave forest friends, teaching patience, weathering storms. Never letting fear stop them from the joy of their forest home.

And we yield, we are burnt out on grief. Shot 57 times at least.

Seated, hands raised.

Horror unending, horror unyielding.

This city I’ve loved for my mom, my mom’s mom, my father who can’t fully walk it.

City I’d never depart.

Bureaucratically unanimous, each mouth reaches back to the same circuit board.

Ungrounded, static, fraying, sparks: senselessness. Unyielding. Deliberate.

Destruction like theirs has to be planned. Closed doors with such blindness they think we cannot see, but the stench escapes by the crack in the door. It wretches us: guts full of poison when we consume this as if it may become reality.

Tortuguita knew better, knew we may always dream of a better way. The power of the creative: revolutionary. In the face of darkness: a powerful light.

A friend far away grieves with me. Voice messages across the seas:

If your country sees it

If your country sees it

We know this boastful city doesn’t truly care of its people nor of its trees.

Nearby the collective supports the grief: a song, a dance, a bodywork ritual.

We memorialize! We fight! We find peace in naught but the earth and the souls that walk it.

We dig out holes for our loved ones, for the creatures we knew.

Back to the earth, they whisper, now we strengthen it, too.

Each passing beauty taken too soon by the hands of corruption, colonization, fumes holds in its decay a power to nourish our future. To slaughter someone generous, creative, keen, unyielding.