⟁≋)) Freshwater: On Rupture, Reflection, and the Refusal to Perform Healing

_reading Freshwater hurts. and it’s an intricate sort of pain. 

⟁≋)) Freshwater: On Rupture, Reflection, and the Refusal to Perform Healing

 What the body won’t say, it still knows.

This is part of an ongoing body of work where I read myself through speculative texts. The first essay in a ting (⟁≋))Reading Rainbow Tings) will always be open.

Next: The Killing Moon & The Shadowed Sun.

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AsideBespoke

 Freshwater is a system. Not a metaphor.

I do not write book reviews.

I am not interested in summarizing someone else’s work or reducing it to opinion, rating, or critique. I cannot review another person. What I can do is sit inside the space a book creates and pay attention to what happens in my body.

I read for recognition. For disturbance. For the places where language presses against something already living in me.

What you will find here is not analysis in the traditional sense. It is a record of contact. A documentation of what moved, what resisted, what surfaced when my body met the architecture of the text.

This is not about the book alone. It is about what the book makes possible.

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reading Freshwater hurts.  

and it’s an intricate sort of pain.  

one that hurts so good in some places  

and in others there is an uncomfortableness,  

an unsurety,  

a liminality that is addictive—  

and maybe addictive isn’t the word  

but it is a feeling that I am not quite able  

to put words to in my body.  

my mouth won’t let me form what it is  

because my body and gut confirm nonverbally.  

____________

threshold

it pulls me across a threshold  

The body adapts before the language arrives.

into a space that feels like  

you don’t need permission to be  

but the ghost selves of coloniality  

are still pulling certain energetic strings  

and I am of the African diaspora.  

which means I have lineage.  

I have access.  

I have indigenous gods and spiritual systems  

that exist outside of what was forced onto me.  

that is what we are told.  

that we can return.  

that we can reconnect.  

that we can go back.  

______

but no one speaks plainly  

about what that return actually requires.  

because it is not soft.  

it is not a gentle homecoming.  

______

it is rupture.  

______

it is the breaking  

of everything that taught you  

how to pray  

how to listen  

how to name what is sacred  

and what is not.  

______

it is the undoing  

of colonial language  

inside the body.  

Communion is built, not inherited clean.

it is learning  

that communion is not inherited intact.  

it must be transformed.  

_____

and transformation does not feel like belonging.  

it feels like disorientation.  

like anger.  

like grief rising without permission.  

______

riotous.  

______

a spiritual wildfire  

that does not ask  

if you are ready  

to receive what was always yours.  

______

because what was always yours  

was also interrupted.  

______

and now you must meet it again  

without the illusion  

that it will feel like safety  

at first contact.  

______

this is not return.  

this is confrontation.  

______

this is learning how to stand  

in relation to something sacred  

without performing  

what you were taught it should look like.  

this is choosing  

to listen anyway.

colonial wild fire rages—  

almost hilariously—  

in anger  

saying: you surely do.  

but from who?  

I need permission from no one  

other than myself  

and the many selves  

that got me to this place.  

______

Colorism in the Body

 I don’t read for escape. I read for recognition.

I resisted Akwaeke Emezi initially.  

and I need to be honest about why.  

______

I deeply struggle with seeing myself reflected in the world.  

______

I read voraciously,  

but I am also deeply aware  

of who I am reading  

and how I may or may not be programmed  

by the work of others.  

______

some books are small bodies wata  

that extend from large reservoirs  

and cosmos’ of personal human experience.  

their electricity moves something  

with my own watas  

and I am inspired  

the reflection in the water  

shows faces that aren’t just mine.  

______

but there is another truth.  

______

in college and grad school,  

reading Black—whether theoretical,  

womanist, afam, or africana—  

I was still surrounded  

by a grouping of Black femme writers  

that were, for the most part,  

palatable.  

closer in proximity  

to something digestible.  

there were tings laced in their texts  

that unsettled my deeply melanated body  

and I was not allowed to speak to it.  

______

so let me say this plainly:  

colorism lives in the body  

before it ever becomes language.  

it shapes:

- who feels safe to read  

- who feels safe to trust  

- who feels familiar  

- who feels like harm  

______

I initially did not read Emezi  

because I saw a picture  

on the back of a book  

and that picture resembled  

people I have experienced deep harm from.  

that is real.  

that is not pretty.  

and that is part of the world we live in.  

______

I judged a book by a body.  

and I am saying that out loud  

because most people will not.  

and some will read that  

and feel it gives them permission  

to dismiss everything else I say.  

The split is architecture.

so be it.  

the first book I read was Little Rot.  

I laugh writing that  

because I never choose easy entry points  

when I explore new authors.  

the title pulled me  

and then it grew in me.  

a slow rot.  

a residue.  

a deep stew of characters  

that made me uncomfortable as hell.  

I could not put it down  

and yet I had to.  

it stretched across weeks  

because I didn’t want it to end  

but I also needed space  

to contend with what it left in me.  

that residue did not disappear.  

it sat.  

and then I came to Freshwater.  

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/23e724_813bceee1269419e940e5f56b76aad2a/720p/mp4/file.mp4

 Animated Afroscape hydrosystem diagram with two mirrored snakes moving through flowing currents toward a central contact point, visualizing interaction between freshwater and saltwater systems. Movment reveals what structure cannot.

and this was different.  

this was not just discomfort.  

this was recognition.  

 There is a room inside the mind where selves convene.

the split.  

the snake.  

the movement between worlds.  

the split within myself  

that I can speak to loudly in my own home  

but must write carefully  

in public  

because an image of instability  

has already been built around me  

by others.  

______

the need to constantly assert  

that I am in my right mind  

when the so-called wrong mind  

is actually the one that survived.  

______

trying to explain  

why I am no contact with my family.  

how my identity was taken  

and replaced  

and I did not even know.  

______

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/23e724_91b8e02ac4b54ac480f8b324b250256d/720p/mp4/file.mp4

What seperates will eventually meet.  Multiple stylized snakes moving across a black starry background, converging toward a central point, symbolizing merging identities, tension, and transformation.

a betrayal  

that does not translate cleanly  

into language.  

the many versions of me  

people thought they saw  

as a result of a forced split  

my mind could not hold.  

being so far inside yourself  

that you have to go mad  

to restore a self  

you have never known.  

the sexual abuse of my body  

by man after man  

and the assumption  

that I chose it  

when I did not.  

______

the selves that were created  

to survive it.  

______

the version of me  

formed before ten years old  

justified by religion  

while hormones  

introduced too early  

fractured me further.  

all of it—  

echoing.  

not identical  

but patterned.  

Ada.  

Asụghara.  

Saint Vincent.  

______

not my story  

but a blueprint I recognize.  

______

I have named  

and renamed  

put to rest  

and revived  

too many selves.  

______

this book made me mad.  

it made me sad.  

it made me smirk  

and giggle  

with a side-eyeing glee.  

I saw myself.  

and the first thing I said  

when I finished was:  

I am not allowed  

to tell my story  

and have it received.  

not by everyone.  

just somewhere.  

just a small place  

where it can land.  

it is a lonely time.  

and still  

I continue.  

I am not Akwaeke Emezi  

and I do not want to be.  

but I exist in a depth  

that does not translate easily  

into a world  

that prefers performance  

over truth.  

I want to say  

this book made me feel better.  

I don’t know that it did.  

what it did  

was deepen feeling.  

and that is something else entirely.  

______

this is not a book review.  

this is me  

processing my life  

through a clarity  

that did not exist  

because I was moved away  

from myself.  

and everyone says  

I should get over it.  

that I should forgive.  

______

but I do not worship  

invisible colonial gods.  

so Freshwater  

has stirred the bitter water in me.  

I wonder  

if sweet water  

will ever reach  

my dry  

peeling lips.  

chapped.  

I bathe my soul  

in the saltwater  

of my ancestors  

and something new  

is forming.  

thirst.  

quench.  

will they ever meet  

the fresh water in me?

Bespokecurry

Not All Water Soothes

⟁≋)) Freshwater: On Rupture, Reflection, and the Refusal to Perform Healing