Sometimes 7

Sometimes we need new ways of remembering and forgetting

Sometimes we teach art in Arkansas and in the tangle of bodies on our canvas we paint the perfect nipple

Sometimes we are awash in mercy

Sometimes we accept the $10 million

Sometimes there are strings

Sometimes we aren't allowed to let men and women swim together at the same time

Sometimes we meet each other where we are at

Sometimes we wait for 32 years and 280 days outside of the hotel where Martin Luther King Junior was shot in the cheek because life is for the living 

Sometimes we believe

Sometimes we set up a committee to discern whether or not women should speak at church

Sometimes our practice of Buddhism reveals unexpected dimensions of our feminism

Sometimes we have sex with women

Sometimes we love women

Sometimes the funders of the building say we cannot dance on stage

Sometimes we love our children teach the bible miss our wife and grieve over coffee

Sometimes we look at pictures of our children all grown up

Sometimes grief is like a balloon held underwater

Sometimes grief is a partner

Sometimes grief is an ocean

Sometimes we don’t walk around the corner to look at the window through which we were killed 

Sometimes we graduated from a Christian college and we’re sitting in our living room when we are shot and killed by a police officer

Sometimes we can’t sleep

Sometimes 100,000 people want our name to replace someone else’s name so that we can be remembered and they can be forgotten

Sometimes we attend church next to the slave market

Sometimes we see the transaction after we sing

Sometimes we say their names to remember them

Sometimes we cry

Sometimes the trees turn red and yellow along the highway

Sometimes we can’t get enough of true crime podcasts but not the ones that are unsolved no we can’t take those for any number of minutes

Sometimes we twerk at memorials

Sometimes we miss the irony of the poster and we ask ourselves if we can buy a shirt at the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and we tell ourselves after 32 years of waiting to leave and we say that we don’t understand we actually want to know why we have been waiting for 32 years outside of the Lorraine Hotel but it is too late and we tell ourselves to go in the doors to the gift shop and buy a shirt and we say no we don’t understand and we want to know more about what we are doing and we say go buy a shirt and we say no we don’t understand us and we say we’re rude and that we won’t support us and as we walk off we say with a wink and a smile sometimes that’s what helps us remember