dearest fear, part i

(a letter to what runs through my veins)

Dearest Fear,

I don't know why I've never written to you before, especially since you've been in my life from before I was born. Was I afraid to be born? I think it was mostly that I was afraid I wouldn't be born. I was also afraid to meet the crying woman who carried me and the man who fathered me. He was the reason the crying woman was always leaking from her eyes and foaming at the mouth.

born of fear

I was born of fear, born in fear, shapen in fear—not so much sin. The people who attempt to speak of God through fear (rather than awe) try to tell me that to have fear is to not have faith. I wanted to be a good follower so I tried to kill fear even though the first commandment is to not kill. Thou shalt not. Still, I couldn't kill off fear completely because I was told I needed fear to know God. Fear, apparently, was "his" love language. Fear and love so often collapsed into each other.

Analogous Colors, 2020. © Titus Kaphar. Photo: Christopher Gardner.

fear as love language

I think fear became my love language too. Everyone I thought I loved I have also feared: my momma, my wasband, my God. I think I feared love itself. I feared myself, my vulnerability, my strength. Fear was everywhere, in everything.

shadow boxing

Dearest Fear...I think you run through my veins. You and I shadow box all the time. Sometimes you put on skin and appear to me, not as a burning bush, but as an elderly white man who asked me for a kiss. We were all afraid. We were all afraid. We—my Black women ancestors and I—could not rest for days after this violation. It had awakened something deep in me. You.

We were remembering the blood of the white men who run through my veins, and how I came to carry their DNA. I wonder if there is a term for being one-eighth white, like the outdated, violent term “octoroon” for being one-eighth Black? Fear of Black presence is so often named and called science, or God. What is feared is called other. Even our language has become fragmented. You were marching down the streets of D.C yesterday. Capitalism has built you an altar.

Dearest Fear, you have been woven into the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We have never been free from you. We do not know how to be with you. You are always a ghost that cannot be named, or held close, or given light.

the source?

Dearest Fear, I think your mother is shame. Maybe I should write her a letter as well. Bring her benevolent offerings to let her know she has been hiding too long.

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