Sankofa in Practice: Black Futures Beyond February
- Kiing Curry
- Feb 28
- 4 min read
Updated: May 25
Editor’s Note: The watering hole flows publicly tonight. Afterward, this post returns beneath the surface for members.
Sankofa in Practice: Black Futures Beyond February
As Black History Month closes, Sankofa in practice becomes necessary.
Black futures cannot live only in February.
We have rehearsed memory.
We have curated reverence.
We have circled the same sanctioned names as if repetition could substitute for return.
But return is not nostalgia.
Sankofa is not looking backward for comfort.
Sankofa is retrieval with discernment.
Sankofa is going back to carry forward what can sustain Black futures beyond February.
And I learned this not in theory — but in rupture.
The Body Electric: Endurance as Return
Last year my appendix ruptured.
There is something sobering about being cut open and stitched back together. The illusion of control leaves first. The body remains.
I started again with walking.
No announcement.
No comeback arc.
No performance of resilience.
Just feet.
Just pavement.
Just breath that felt like borrowed light.
I told myself I would never run.
Running felt like punishment. Like proof. Like colonial grading systems in motion.
But the body electric — this nervous system that hears tings, sees tings, knows tings before language — began restoring itself without asking my permission.
Cellular intelligence.
Indigenous Wildfire.
Not destructive.
Clearing.
I did not wake up a runner.
I syncopated.
Thirty seconds faster.
Back to slow.
A quiet jog folded into a walk like a secret I wasn’t ready to name.
And one day in December, I ran a 5K on a treadmill in 50 minutes without stopping.
I do not care about national averages.
I care that I did not abandon myself.
That is endurance redefined.
Not hypervigilance.
Not urgency.
Not colonial acceleration disguised as excellence.
Endurance as return.
Hypervigilance Is Not Sovereignty
I once believed control kept me safe.
Jaw tight.
Tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth.
Brain scanning the horizon for rupture.
Finish it now.
Solve it now.
Do not let the mind wander somewhere it cannot return from.
That was endurance too.
But it was the endurance of fear.
Black History Month, as currently practiced, often mirrors that same hypervigilance. We cling to trauma narratives. We rehearse harm. We perform unity while quietly resenting one another. We outsource liberation to the state and call it strategy.
We cosplay Black excellence while neglecting daily practice.
February becomes controlled terrain.
Predictable.
Curated.
Contained.
But Black futures beyond February require outdoor training.
Unpredictable terrain builds devotion.
Wind.
Uneven ground.
Real sky.
Sankofa in practice means we retrieve what sustains — and release what colonized our cadence.
Boundaries That Hold Love
As we move beyond February, Adinkra offers instruction.
Sankofa — return differently.
Aya — endurance without self-abandonment.
Eban — boundaries that hold love.
Adwo — peace as disciplined action.
The watering hole is not for spectators.
Love without boundary becomes depletion.
Boundary without love becomes exile.
Sankofa in practice demands both.
I can no longer offer free endurance to conversations that refuse transformation.
This is not withdrawal.
This is sovereignty.
Daily embodied sovereignty.
If my thoughts go off-road — I can return.
If my nervous system spikes — I can return.
If visibility does not match brilliance — I can return.
Return is the ritual.
Return is the rep.
Return is altar work.
The Six Waters
The wata(ring) whole is not metaphor alone. It is structure.
In March, we move through the Six Waters:
I Hear Tings — listening beyond performance.
I See Tings — vision beyond algorithm.
I Speak Tings — language as responsibility.
I Eat Tings — nourishment as political practice.
I Touch Tings — embodiment as memory.
I Know Tings — cellular intelligence over colonial urgency.
Sankofa lives in all six.
February rehearses memory.
March practices return.
Black futures beyond February are not slogan. They are daily practice.
They are pacing.
They are boundary.
They are devotion without self-erasure.
Devotional: Altar’d U Astro Me
Ancestors who carried pattern in bone,
who ran without treadmills,
who read wind as scripture —
stand near.
If vigilance was the altar I was placed upon,
I step down now.
If urgency braided itself into my jaw,
unbraid me.
If performance colonized my pacing,
restore my rhythm.
I hear tings.
I see tings.
I know tings before language arrives.
Let this knowing be clean.
Let my body be the drum again.
Let my breath be the oracle.
Let my pacing be prayer.
I do not need to finish everything at once to be chosen.I do not need to outrun my own nervous system to be worthy.
Indigenous wildfire lives in my cells.
It clears what colonized my cadence.
It leaves the soil intact.
This lil light of mine —
cosmic, cellular, sovereign —
you cannot steal my shine.
We are not a commemorative season.
We are ecosystem remembering itself.
And we return — differently.
Sankofa in Practice: Black Futures Beyond February
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