A GESTURE TOWARDS HOME
after Jericho Brown
My body is always headed in your direction.
It knows how to get back to you.
Home means giving my body back to you.
Home is no place for breathing.
Boys age to be men without ever breathing.
We pray to their names, tiny brown gods.
This city is our closest doorway to God.
The entrance hidden beneath the water.
This river is more blood than water.
Free souls underneath all that red.
The whites of my father’s eyes have turned red.
Time does what nothing else can to a body.
Even in this decay of my body,
I am headed in your direction.
KeeShawn Murphy is a writer and academic from Southeast D.C. She holds a B.A. from Lafayette College. Previously an English teacher at Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts, she is currently in the first year of her MFA program at the University of Kentucky. Her writing focuses on the complicated intersections of black womanhood, spirituality, and familial relationships.