blk people don't hoard, we archive

By E'mon Lauren

                after ariea d. matthews & harlem west

when i cleared out my o.g’s apartment, in it was mostly mail. two packs of noodles,

some china bowls, work clothes, and mail. a soap pump, some size five shoes, and

mail. a studio turned mail box. a red flag left standing. notice that aint nobody

checked it out in a while. overflowing and over full. stuffed with anxiety, that at

any moment, something could be gone, taken. a lack of confirmation that a

payment goes through. i’ve learned, that my mama may have held a little worry
when it came to finances. as responsible as she was, she held onto receipts of cashier

checks from years ago. a paper trail that says everything here is paid for. no one
can take away what we have receipts for. no one can claim we never made a move,

if we don’t hold onto the boarding pass. i take a pair a matches with me from every

restaurant, because i want proof that i dined. that i ate the world up full, and

washed it down with a bottle of backwash. i want my children to empty my closets,

and know i have a full love. i have 3 boyfriends at the same time and kept a piece

of them together, in the same box. when i have to explain myself later, there will

be evidence that matches the story. i do not keep my sake out of fear, but out of

memorialization. i want it to be known that i’ve lived a life. with pictures to match.

that the dust that hoards my life, will equal the pile of my ash. it’s something to be

said about how well we can hold onto memories. my o.g was the archivist of the
family. now we only communicate through her old lens. a polaroid that fold over all

the bullshit. when i send them pictures of their baby faces, they remember who
they used to be. and i realize they met the mother i never have. when i cleaned out

my o.g’s apartment, i found everything but pictures. i take pictures out of anxiety

now. afraid that i won’t remember i was here. or god. the worser thought. that i

never thought i would be here today. proof of life. sometimes i don’t know how to

say i’m here. but then to take a picture. i wonder if my mother only felt like she

was here, because she paid for it. i hoard my life out of fear. that at any moment i

could be dropped. that there were past moments when i tried to do it to myself.

and id rather take a hoarded selfie than a coroner’s snap shot. when my friends

find me through their phone, they will remember my poems and look for my first

book stored somewhere in a storage or a library's archive. nothing is lost in an

archive. everything is remembered, organized, filed, stored away, sweared on. i

cannot hoard what has become a memory. i cannot stuff away what lives inside.

this mess around me, is just proof of how lush i am. this mess around me, is up for
the next. and there wont be any deciphering. you all will know through and

through who i was. that this life was paid for. with the receipts to match.

E'mon Lauren is Chicago's first Youth Poet Laureate and author of COMMANDO (Haymarket Books). Her work centers Black femme life on the West and South sides of the city. A winner of Solstice's Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry, she is at work on her second collection, Finesse.