Session Two Anthology

MENTOR: Angel Nafis

libations / a pouring out

My back is a bag of right angles. Of lost hours and
delayed trains. Yes yes but I’m in no rush. In no hurry
at all. Go where? For what? We were always out there.
Doing things we were never meant to be doing seeing
things not meant for eyes to see. They were lessons
though. I was young once too. Laid out on a raggedy
gingham skin roasting in the sun like a holiday turkey.
Only He knows what you got going on in that head of
yours. Probably something regarding kale or TV
shows or technology or birth control or why
I shouldn’t call a prostitute a prostitute. No I will
continue to say what I have to say regardless of what
you have to say about it. Who needs visitors anyways?
Especially these days. Everyone’s all mixed up. Never
knowing quite what’s right, quite what’s wrong. You
kids always running around here trying to prove
something to somebody. Prove something to yourself.
Prove something to your God. That’s all you got to do.
You know it’s entirely possible to start something
finish it and never start something new. Sure. Sure it
is. Sometimes that’s just the way it is. And try not to
let the wasted salt worry you. Won’t do you no good
no how. It hurts I know it do. But so what? Why
shouldn’t it? Don’t you remember how foggy it was?
How dense it was? The pain not the fog. You cried
then and what good did it do you. I saw you that night.
Sitting there all stubborn and certain in your silence.
If you want to know something my best advice is for
you is to leave. Yes because you will never love him
more than yourself. And you are precise and steady
and true and that will never be okay. Never mind how
the stars twinkle. Our job is to sit here and to witness.
Mhm. You know I am so tired of you changing my
stories everytime you come over here. At my age the
last thing I need is a lesson in letting go~

Marly Pierre-Louis is a writer, exciter and freedom fighter originally from Brooklyn currently living, loving and working in Amsterdam. She lives with a 6-year-old and a 41-year-old; both of whom claim to be related to her. Marly is the co-founder of Amsterdam Black Women - a collective of diasporic black women expats. She works in tech as a Senior UX Copywriter.

Marly has been published in Versal. Her work has been read in and around Amsterdam, most recently at the Read my World literary festival in 2017.

Literarily, she sits at the feet of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and hip hop. She loves downward dogs, dark liquor, colorful lipstick and slaying white supremacist patriarchal dragons.