fluoresensitive:STRANGE FRUIT by Yah Yah Scholfield / 1.6k words /Trigger warning for allusions to a
fluoresensitive:STRANGE FRUIT by Yah Yah Scholfield / 1.6k words /Trigger warning for allusions to anti-Black violence. There’s a lot I can say about this piece of writing. It really took me suddenly, and I couldn’t focus on anything else until I wrote it. Be patient with me with this long introduction; I don’t feel coherent.I am Black. I always knew I was Black, from the moment I was conscious. I knew I was Black when my white elementary school teachers accused me of having an attitude problem, when white people on the internet called me slurs during my rp days. I knew I was black with Tamir Rice was killed, and Sandra Bland, and Trayvon Martin, and all the other Black people’s whose death I’ve been made to witness since I was very young. In the 5th grade, my elementary school teacher had pictures of slaves with their backs ripped open. I was around the same age when I saw the body of Emmit Till, waterlogged and beaten. When I was fourteen, I saw Mike Brown’s dead body. And in between then and now, pictures of lychings, by it with rope or guns, literally every day, not a single break to catch my breath or heal.Many Black people can tell you the same story. Day after day of anti-Black trauma, microaggresions, acts of racism big and small. I have never been able to write a story about it because it’s too close. I couldn’t do it. Literally thinking about all the death, the fact that I could just as easily be one of the dead Black people. My brother? My cousins? My parents? It’s a fear special to Black folks, knowing that you could lose your life and nobody but your own would care. I feel heavy. I’m just fucking heavy.There’s no extreme descriptions of violence in this story, only emotion. If you can stomach it, stomach it, then do me a massive favor, and give to Admaud Arbery’s family. Fuck the police, fuck white supremacy, and motherfuck anti-Blackness. Summer’s thebest time for picking fruit. Though it buds and ripens all year round, there’sno better time than the height of summer, all the heat radiating off the sidewalkand the car windows, people’s radiators blowing cool-hot air, the whirringsound of the A/C mingling with the sound of music, talking, cussing, summerbugs. Feels like one big hum, the skin and scalp prickling with sweat, like youcould wring yourself out and dry on your porch. Mama’s toosick to go with us this time, so me, Rochelle, Tito and Kiki go by ourselves.Takes a while to get there if you don’t have a car or a bike. Kiki and Tito— they’re siblings, half—used to havebikes but their Daddy put them away after what happened with Ricky. Too closeto home, he said, so now all of us, all four of us, were walking down thestreet, some of us holding machetes, some of us holding garbage bags, headingout to the field where all the fruits were. As we go, more people join us. It’ssome kids, some adults, but all of us look the same, brown and black carryingour things, lugging wagons and strollers, holding knives and garden shears tomake the cutting easier, going in the same direction. Keep reading -- source link