Notes on Safety
You want to return to the womb. Maybe then everything will be quiet and safe again. But of course, you think about the children. The people, all of them, alone in their homes and schools and prisons and countries. You think how can anyone be safe when they are not? And so, then, you cannot feel safe in that womb anymore. Your mother, a beautiful, stifled woman, is one of those lonely people, and then, of course, so are you— a floating thing in her stomach. You aren’t sure now what you want, but you know it has to do with the feeling of locking the door behind you after a 12 hour day, and breathing in the sound of your love, fast asleep upstairs, dreaming of your face.
When Thoreau said that he walks four hours a day to “preserve his health and spirits,” what was it that he meant? In High School, I always thought this was stupid. Some people can’t walk, Thoreau. Some people must work and break their backs and stay inside the shop until it closes and cry only when the lights are out and the children are asleep. He says, “I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago” and that is the least and most correct sentence in the book. Credit, of course, is due. But not for the reasons he cites. Common people are called common because no one can see them through the crowd, and mustn’t that be the worst way to live? Mustn’t that make them want to just disappear?
When you walk home from campus, you’re never scared. Nothing in the dark, you think, can threaten your blackness. Your womanhood, though, is another story. It feels unreal, unloved, unwanted, and therefore, you are not afraid. You probably should be. But the police always have lights so you always know they’re coming, and so, you are never afraid of being caught unawares when you walk here. The problem, though, is your mother is terrified. She lost a mother at 13 and has tried to hold on to everyone else since. You, mirror image and happy child, are everything she wanted you to be, and so now, especially now, she cannot and will not lose you. She watches over FaceTime as you walk past the buildings and through the shadows. You have nothing to talk about, but her particular silence makes you miss her presence more than any other quiet. You’re sure safety has been there the whole time, lurking over your right shoulder, but now, she is at ease.
People, you know, are in trouble— always. You aren’t sure yet how to fix it, but it feels like it has to happen right now, and every second it doesn’t, the little space between the back of your heart and your spinal cord whispers that you’re betraying them. All of them. Everyone. Every day, when it gets quiet, you can hear it. You know more must be done and that people are dying but you are small and black and a woman and what has that ever done for anyone? What has anyone ever thanked you for? So you keep going. You write and you write and you hope one day, when you’re good enough for them, people will read your words and the thrumming in their chest will understand. You hope, you even pray sometimes, that everything will be okay, but everything is okay for you so what does that mean for the dying? What does that mean for the ones who understand the barrel of a gun? What does it mean that you were pulled over on your eighteenth birthday and you nearly missed adulthood? What does it mean that you never feel safe anywhere in the world that the red and blue lights can touch, and you are dressed in privilege? How safe must they feel then? All alone in their beds, surrounded by ghosts?
There was a time, once, that you left a boy because he scared you. It took you no longer than 9 days to extract yourself from his grasp, and yet, you were only a girl. 15 at most. When he throws things and only wants you to do what he wants you to do, your chest starts to sting and your throat is coated in bile. There is no other way to say it. You leave. You say no more. You say sorry so many times. Once he is gone, your friend (another boy) says, but you know he wouldn’t have actually hurt you, right? And all you can do is nod and swallow. Of course. I honestly just stopped liking him.
All I want, really, is for everyone to get home safely, in every sense of the word. I think that was what I said. I’m being interviewed for a scholarship that I don’t believe I have done anything to earn, but it feels natural like the truth always does. I feel comfortable here, like nothing matters but the people who need saving. Too many Black people do not get home safe. Too many people do not get home safe. Too many people are unloved because of something they did not choose for themselves. Too many people are not safe and there are too many reasons why. Ultimately, I want everyone everywhere to love and feel loved and not be afraid to go home and god, why can’t that just happen? Why can’t we all just stop hating each other and creating reasons to be hated? Can’t we all get along? And sure, maybe that is a privileged thing to say, but what else can you do? What else can any of us do but breathe and hope it happens long enough to save them all?
And the lyric is, “if the world was ending, you’d come over right?” It is the doomsday, piano ballad, romance song that our generation warrants, but that’s never how that lyric feels to you. You think, every time, of your mother, and how the love she has for you radiates across borders and through telephone lines. You think, every time, of how she’d walk to you if she had to; how she’d do anything for you if it came down to it; how she’d never give you up, not even for a minute. You remember how once, you stopped talking for an entire day as a baby and that was the day she packed up and left him. Her love stretches, it always has, and it’s one thing you’re sure of. The line is always a happy-cry kind of line, but when the tears fall, they feel more like missing her. JP Saxe says it, and you’re sure he’s talking to a lover, asking her if she’d spend those last apocalyptic minutes with him because even though they aren’t quite right for each other, their love is a let’s-get-together-at-the-end-of-the-world kind of love. You think about that idea, and all you can see is her face. All you can think is she is home, she will always be home.
There’s a place, deep inside your chest where your heart ends, and in front of it, your creaky sternum rests— not as strong as it thinks but still there, sturdy as ever. Whenever you think of danger or you are danger or you are in danger, it pulses and squeezes and tries to calm down, but never succeeds. It is the same part that tells the food not to come back up when you think of him. It is where the pain starts when you want to cry. It is your beacon, and when it is warm and safe and beating normally, you are sure, almost positive, that everything is okay.
-Dakotah Jennifer
Dakotah Jennifer is a nineteen-year-old black writer currently attending Washington University in St. Louis. She started writing poetry at eight and has loved it ever since. Jennifer has been published in Protean Mag, Apartment Poetry, Paintbucket.page, the Grief Diaries, The Confessionnalist Zine, and Ripple Zine. She won Washington University's Harriet Schwenk Kluver award for the 2018-2019 year and a 2018 Scholastic Gold Medal for her personal essay “A Murder”. Her first chapbook, Fog, was recently published by Bloof Books, and her next chapbook/zine, Safe Passage, was recently released with Radical Paper Press.