On Allowance of the Black Sky Letting Light Into Its Vastness by Kaiisaiah Jamal

ON ALLOWANCE OF THE BLACK SKY LETTING LIGHT INTO ITS VASTNESS.

KAI ISAIAH JAMAL, WRITER & SPOKEN WORD POET.

There is nothing more beautiful than the sky, not even the moon. For if the sky turned a white shade of cotton, the clouds a dying strand of grey hair, you would not know what the moon’s face even looks like. The sky engulfs enough colour to change with the sun. Which is to say when it is dark and the sun says goodnight, it is still whole enough and black enough to just, be. Darkness, is the vast space of everything that was brought up on soul food, dancing and enough manners to let light creep through it’s gasps and still be called more beautiful, more safe, more something that is deserving of space. Like, when was the last time you were in complete black out and didn’t feel like everyone wanted you to be scared? But you felt scared and home. Basking in the wholeness of not even being able to see your finger-tips in the dark. Before lighters are sparked, guns are pulled and light comes. That looks the colour of your Mother. When she is mad and red is turning white into a fire. Which is to say, is it not here

that you are truly scared. When you can actually see. See what light does to dark, like kill it, make it disappear, steal every centimetre he owns. But bones are ivory and they too are stolen from places where the soil be as dark as the people. We say rising of the moon but behind the moon lays a black back-drop that looks a lot like home and is that not applaudable, the pitch black sky not bending, retaining its shape, holding its spine whilst the light shines in front of it. Is that not glory? Is there no verse for that? I will write it in the darkness, like braille. Praise to the vastness of the night. Praise to the night, that we love its darkness even when it is harmonious with our death. We know it cannot protect us to what happens in it, those that roam is realms. Praise to the disappearing act that black bodies do when the moon is rising. Praise to the black bodies. That start vanishing feet first before being pronounced as dead. Praise to the death that the black sky has on its body count. Praise the space that rays penetrate.

Praise to staying whole in a pressure cooker of life. Praise to cloaks.

Coats with big hoods that somehow turn into comfort blankets. Praise to being black and living day after day, as moon rises and sun falls and sun rises and nights calls you in. Praise to survival.

There is nothing more beautiful than the sky, not even the moon. I swear.