the years measured in distance from the ocean

I’d never lived so far from the Atlantic.

But I was just three flights of grainy apartment stairs away from immersing my feet, calves, or entire body in water year-round.

I didn’t realize some pools never closed.

It is September 2016, and I celebrate turning twenty-five with strangers at my apartment complex’s small, in-ground pool.

Ten months sober and desperate to live alone, I moved to Austin free of my first real romantic (long-distance) relationship, roommate drama, and racist non-profit organizations. This shiny MFA program appeared to offer the most of what I needed as a Black, queer, non-binary artsy educator.

Preparing for the party, I eye an outfit purchased during my carefree adventures in DC earlier that summer. The buddy assigned by my graduate program, a white woman who talks a lot about her time in Costa Rica, knocks on my door while I’m still shoving myself into the secondhand very low-cut fuchsia Nasty Gal dress.

The dress doesn’t fit.

The semester begins and I try to not drown in white women’s tears. Just weeks into our Drama Based Pedagogy and Practice class, two of my cohort-mates cry after facilitating a session on race and diversity, a topic they both eagerly chose.

I pour my energy into meeting queer and trans people of color, hosting potlucks and sad turn-ups in my one-bedroom apartment. An ongoing quest to avoid the crashing waves of loneliness.

I dive into a relationship with someone six years older than me. On the surface, it’s sweet. According to OkCupid, they’re polyamorous and seem more reflective and communicative than my ex. We discuss art and gender with A Seat at the Table playing in the background. Nestled on my red microfiber couch, we eat Dots from the movie theatre sized box and talk about teaching after-school. Returning from one particularly rough day, their red car pulls up alongside mine in the diagonal parking spots across from my complex. They present a gift bag of vegan treats and a saccharine card, then drive off again like a fairy.

Some evenings, I park in the long driveway and enter their half of the house through a private back door, avoiding their white housemate. Winded by suffocating whiteness, I snore on their low black couch moments later, the air always reminiscent of whatever strawberry scent fills their vape. Sometimes I awaken to photos of my squished, sleeping face. Other times, they lament that I’m not more present, that we don’t share quality time. Exhausted from wading through white pedagogy, strained long-distance relationships, and never-ending theatre games, I don’t know any other way to be.

My inboxes flood with shoulds and coulds.

Our sweet connection sours. We argue about everything. A dam bursts and I hyperventilate for maybe an hour. Words to explain can’t break through the heartache, the cross-country move, the twenty-five years of everything. I curl on the floor of their living room and sob, tissues piling up, submerged in hurt.

States away from anyone who has known pre-Texas me, I need the relationship to be okay even if it isn’t perfect, even if it’s painful. Ignoring my intuition, I rationalize the storm. Perhaps the magic of my first relationship was just a lucky fluke.

I don’t want to be alone.

My first year ends and the air gets hotter. My partner moves into my cool apartment for the summer. I fly back to Philly, then across the ocean, back to Ghana.

Though outnumbered, the white students on the study abroad trip study us as well. Stuck on the bus for hours, I struggle to tune out their prodding questions and clueless comments.

In Accra, I swim in the outdoor hotel pool whenever I can. We don’t understand the chemistry, but the water embraces us gently, unlike the chlorine back home. My friends and I float until the pool lights illuminate our shriveled fingerprints. The water cradles us, safely away from the students who see us as problems, as research subjects. The water doesn’t think I’m too loud. It feels like home.

I read Homegoing for class and cry in my hotel bed.

At Cape Coast and Elmina, I breathe with the water crashing against the walls.

I record the waves so I can remember what the ocean said.

In the pitch-black chambers, I squeeze my roommate’s hand as tears escape reuniting with the earth.

We pour libations before the Door of No Return.

For our final class project, I lead my group in devising a site-specific theatre piece. In the afternoon, we perform our pieces at five points around the hotel pool, our audience stationary. For the last moment, my moment, we move under the outdoor showers.

Everyone in the village grows up knowing

I twist the faucet, projecting my last line through the cool water raining over me.

play the colonial role and don’t make a scene.

I return to Austin and leave for New Orleans. I don’t offer to drive, not willing to risk being pulled over while Black in the south. Thinking of Sandra Bland, my eyes meet the Houston skyline for the first time.

My chatty white classmates drive us over the third longest bridge in the country. In and out of sleep, I eat vegan cream cheese on gluten-free bread in the backseat. They talk so much. They discuss major historical storms unfamiliar to me. I drown out their continuous conversation with Monica Martin on repeat, studying the water.

The American Alliance for Theatre and Education Conference boasts a sea of white. On the way to the French Market, the sky opens in a way I’ve never seen. Suddenly surrounded by the waterfalls of a strange urban water park, I hobble on broken lime green platform sandals to cover.

Clothes and curls drenched, I buy a whole new outfit from a Black woman’s stand. Wrapped in a long patterned yellow skirt and matching headwrap, I feel home.

I trust our Uber’s massive truck tires to deliver us through the floods.

I escape the conference hotel to stay with friends. At a queer pool party, I smile at the people splashing, but don’t get in.

I fly to Ann Arbor. The Pride Youth Theatre Alliance Conference is a pond of white. On the bus to Detroit, I grab the mic to question the white women’s decision to take us on a segregation tour. Bodak Yellow blasts in my earbuds on repeat. I don’t see any water.

I want to go home.

I return to Austin. My partner is now my ex and moves out. The desire to reconnect evaporates. I shove old gifts and pots left behind into a black trash bag for my friend to return. I donate the black and red shirts plucked from their closet. They write me a lengthy letter. Which I burn. Badly.

It rains. For days. They name the rain and the wind Harvey.

The rain sings me to sleep.

The rain slows, and Austin is back. Three hours away, Houston is not.

It’s my birthday weekend and my friend successfully zips me into the very low-cut fuchsia Nasty Gal dress for the first time. They snap pre-party photos of me posing with dark chocolate charcoal sorbet on the vegan ice cream shop’s plastic floral benches.

My gas tank won’t make it downtown. All the pumps we pass are covered in plastic, empty.

We pull up to my building as my neighbor laughs in the parking lot with a radiant friend I’ve never seen. As the four of us pile into my neighbor’s car toward the same party, I can’t stop smiling.

i broke before

when you laughed your name and light sang through the car

when rain and rock and wood conspired and you ended up

resting your golden smile

on my couch

the air soft and tender and electric

After the rain, a spark.

Two days pass and I turn twenty-six in the pool, surrounded by friends, supported by pineapple and donut floaties.

I float on my back, held by the water, savoring moments where I don’t have to fully support myself.

Upstairs in my third-floor living room, we sing show tunes and laugh until late.

I fall in love.

We eat chips lying on a heart-stamped cloth under the stars and I beam, even if it’s not a date.

We sing The Color Purple in my silver Buick.

I cry a lot.

my heart cracked open

ugly but

a beautiful breaking

necessary

a reminder that I could (still) feel

that everything wasn’t pain and hurt and fighting to love

to learn

to exist

A tenured white woman calls me volatile. My white classmates protest after pushing me out of their process and stealing my words for their demands. They flee the room, leaving the Black students to mop up their mess.

The chair of the department reports me for racism. Two campus offices investigate me. My social media is monitored. I am blamed for my white classmates’ actions.

I withdraw from school. I look forward to drives to the grocery stores. I chuckle at episode after episode of Living Single. I listen to the Black Panther score on repeat by the pool.

The mediation process halts because I have nothing to apologize for. I hang up on the condescending white woman mediator.

I perform a solo show in a festival, unboxing my sexual trauma, gender, and pain in front of strangers.

The anxiety comes in waves.

I sing in my first musical theatre performance in years and hear so many friends cheering from the dark bar audience.

I drink again and it feels healthier, safer.

I get to be the biggest spoon.

I ponder flavors at the vegan ice cream shop three times a week.

Maybe I’m finding a home.

I try to keep the rage from resurfacing.

I watch Beychella over and over and cry each time.

I long for the ocean.

The other two spoons start dating and the tears spill out even though I know no one is wrong.

The beginnings of home dissolve.

and i melted

pooled around myself

sinking into salty sea

sank to truly meet myself

I decide to be closer to the ocean. To my family. To my grandmom.

I pack up my whole life as I did just two years before, but this time it’s heavier.

I say goodbye to my friends at the pool, laughter, loud music, and drinks flowing.

I’m not the only one who cries.

I give away my hand-me-down 1980 Vitamix, books on polyamory mailed by a friend, and the secondhand artificial tree I kept up way past Christmas.

I see the total cost to ship seven boxes of books and clothes to New Jersey and sob in front of the Post Office.

My friends pack my belongings for me because trying to shove my life into three suitcases is too much.

The cat screams.

I miss my flight, drained.

I leave my car in Austin with The Color Purple and Rent CDs still inside.

At home, the beach is only an hour away.

Closer to the ocean.

Closer to floating on my back in the Atlantic.

Maybe closer to freedom.

Originally published in RADICAL: An Unapologetic Anthology by Women & Gender Non-Conforming Storytellers of Color, 2021.