Audio Transcript: 

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Hello?

 

Don’t you usually ask what is your emergency? Or do I call too much for you to respond with the usual “pleasantries” that really aren’t pleasantries but have become pleasantries to me. Pleasant but disorienting, because every time, I call for a reason and I swear it was important, so important that my hands began to burn. I had to call you and you would ask, what’s your emergency, and I would start looking for it. It was just right here. Shaking my shoulders. Scattering my heart beat. Stabbing  my mind. It was just swallowing my feet, my ankles. It was casting the first stone. It was just splitting me into two then four, then into odd numbers. I was just smelling gas. I saw a man who was a gun. And I was the trigger. I was just walking in a city that was a graveyard. I found myself in the teeth of a nation that eats its own flesh.

 

but then you would ask me, what’s your emergency, and it would sound like

 

Water on water. Rain on river. Smell like ginger, freshly grated, and brewed in hot hot water. Feel like steam on the face. A burn in the throat, the belly, warmed. A fire tended.

 

I swear I called you to put out these fires in my life and then you would ask me that question, and suddenly, I would only see the flames that needed tending. The fires that needed fanning and food. This life force. This light.

 

And now I’m wondering if I wanted not someone to fight the fire but to know it. To fear not this flame but hold it. To love these ashes. To see me in the smoke of my own mirrors.

 

So please, I know, I call you so often, but can you just ask, one more time, 

 

What is your emergency?

 

Hello? What is your emergency?

And why are you here? And what

Has your life become? And what have you created? What have you destroyed?

And why are you are here? And why did you call?

And can you feel your own breath?

Your heartbeat?

And are you alone?

And are you in a busy place?

And are you safe right now?

Have you looked out the window?

And when is the last time you felt like yourself?

 

Felt alive? And can you afford to live? You must.

And who is your emergency contact?

And do you have anyone to call? Someone to speak to?

And do you know the power of your own hands. That love can be mold 

And do you know you’re in a building that has been empty for so long

But it’s learning to be full again

 

Are you learning to be full again?

 

I am learning to be full again. 

I was created for a purpose.

Beyond these walls, something was burning

So I’m told

Communication is how

To put a fire out.

Signals. Receiving signals. Sending. Sending saviors.

What is the relationship 

Between messenger and messiah

 

I was created

For a purpose

As technology changed, so did I.

 

Pull in case of fire. Pull in case

In case in case of fire. Pulled

Light. A sign. To connect. 

Later. Calls. Ringing, and ringing. A sign.

I transformed, but my center was my center

My center was my center

But then i was drained out of it

 

And who have I become

In the decades of my emptiness

And who was I before

Beginning to wonder if I was ever

Full

 

I’m not used to all these bodies inside of me

To all this color. All this light. To all this witness.

 

Forgive me my own confusions. My coordinates

Never changed but my core did. I am learning to be full again

Learning to be called / by new names.

 

I don’t even know all I can be. Don’t even know

All that I am. But this is a signal. I am possible. I am alive.

I am ancestor and descendent all at once.

 

There’s a fire outside and there’s a fire inside

And what is the water of art

And what is the water of action

And what are you here to extinguish

And what are you here to ignite

 

I have died and died again

And I rise and rise again

 

Faith has become my friend.

You are inside me. Proof of new life.

Testimony.

 

The fire inside of us is worthy of protection.

And reinvention.

We live the questions

 

I used to fear I missed too many calls

 

But I am calling my calling back. I’m calling my calling back.

 

It responds:

 

I never stopped calling you in the first place.