“And my running feet could fly/ each breath screaming/ ‘We are all too young to die’” -- “Between Two Lungs” by Florence + the Machine
A couple of months before things got real bad and I admitted you into the hospital for the last time, the earth shook. This was almost three years after your initial diagnosis, and while the rumble of the ground may have been frightening to transplants, as a native Californian who’d slept through countless earthquakes, it wasn’t the shake that woke me, but rather Trini’s incessant bark. I hadn’t experienced the initial quiver, but, rather, the tail end of the roll that felt like I was driving down a steep dip in Nob Hill. Trini was barking at the ceiling, and you responded by popping out of bed with a look of focus and determination. When I asked where you were going, you didn’t respond. You simply carried on with your next steps, grabbing the 6 foot-something sword leaning near the doorway that separated the bedroom from the living room.
What the hell are you doing?! I yelled over Trini’s shout, while sliding my eye-mask onto the top of my headscarf. You were unsheathing the katana blade with an ease that comes only with practice.
“Shhhhhh…. I’m getting ready for battle,” you said in a loud whisper. Your legs spread wide, straddling the doorway. You were in your version of Warrior 1, with your front leg bending into the living room, and your back leg straight into the bedroom. You lifted the sword into the air, pointing it towards the front door and phantom intruder, while Trini barked like an ill-equipped sidekick at your feet.
Lovie—what the fuck are you going to do with THAT? It’s an earthquake, not a break in! Feeling both exasperated and amused, I wasn’t completely surprised by your response. I’d often come home to you practicing such moves, “just in case.” And even if it was a break-in, I said. That thing can barely pierce an orange!
As the rumbling calmed, you returned to consciousness, pulling yourself out of your warrior stance, with Trini’s screech transitioning into the low growl of an elder. “You, know, the Hoyte’s gotta be ready for the apocalypse,” you said, while playing off your dreamlike theatrics. “Trini and I gotta keep my Lovie safe.” And, then like nothing happened, you and Trini started your morning, while I tried to get 20 more minutes of sleep.
You were obsessed with being ready for “the apocalypse”—always buying food in bulk even though we ate out too often. We had multiple backpacks, full of emergency equipment, “just in case.” And to my annoyance, you were obsessive about keeping our apartment stocked with a bounty of toilet paper. When I’d make a fuss about the lack of storage for it all, you’d stuff the twenty-three remaining rolls into your closet while looking at me dead in the eyes, and in one of your deep, animated voices, say “You complain now, young jedi, but look who’ll be your hero when you have mud butt and think you’ve run out of the triple ply.”
Since your passing, I often imagine conversations we’d have if you were here. I dream up hypothetical exchanges, mentally listing all the things I’d have to catch you up on. This is my version of Joan Didion’s “magical thinking.”
A recurring thought I started to have around 18 months after you transitioned is what if you came back from wherever you went after breath left your body, and I’d have to explain all this PANDEMIC shit to you?
I’d sit you down on our green velvet sofa (the one in my new apartment in Biggie's old neighborhood), pour us each a snifter of aged Angostura on the rocks, and start spilling the tea the way I used to when there was gossip to share. The crazy thing is, I’d have to speed past what normally would’ve been the big news:
●. Leaving my job as a principal and moving Trini and I to Brooklyn
●. The men I’ve tried to date
●. The solo trip I took to Trinidad where I bought the rum we’re sipping
●. My first children’s book that would soon be published . . .
all so that I could get to the real drama of it all: I’ve been living through a real live apocalypse…. like, book of Revelations kinda shit. A disease that attacks the lungs and that makes breath difficult, and for some, impossible, was attacking lives across the world. People were dying, and unlike us, didn’t have the privilege to hold hands with their loved ones as they transitioned. The government was ill-prepared and giving us little guidance. I had to stock up on necessities and live my life at home (and you know that despite all the Cancer I have in my natal chart, I hate staying in the house for so long). White supremacy was really showing its ass, murdering Black folks on and off camera, and this time around, more non-Black people felt enraged than usual.
This is where you’d cover your mouth with a closed fist and say, “Daaaaammmmn, Lovie. What did you do?” Then, you’d take a long, exaggerated sip of the rum from your home country, look at me with absolute sincerity, and say, “Did you have enough toilet paper, tho?”
Fortunately, since your passing, I’ve picked up some of your habits. So, while others were fighting for Bounty in check out lines, I had toilet paper spilling out of closets.
✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎
Eventually, we’d learn that you had fluid spilling into your lung. But initially, it started with a cough. A single dry cough pushing its way out of your throat. It was unassuming at first, more of a nuisance than an emergency. But then it became more aggressive. You were convinced that it was allergies. I’d respond to this explanation with a side-eye, knowing good and well that dander was not to blame, and the peppered ash from Santa Clara’s fires didn’t travel as far down the Peninsula that year.
By the end of October, I was growing more irritated with the way the coughs were colonizing your body, causing your broad chest to convulse. “Dust Mites,” you’d say with confidence. You’d grown loyal to your month-long relationship with this hypothesis. But a lifetime of navigating my own asthma granted me some insight when it came to matters of the lungs. The lack of wheeze and the random bouts of labored breath was becoming more worrisome.
I screamed at you a week before your diagnosis. Though elevated voices were not uncommon for us, my high octave and shrill tone in the car that day startled us both. Usually raised voices were reserved for important matters, like the marathon debate about whether or not we should get a dog—we eventually got our Jack Russell Terrier, Trinidad Helsinki Peters-Hoyte, who’d ultimately become your companion, until I was the only one left for the cuddles Trini craved. Dinner choices also resulted in much fire and desire on both our parts-- sushi or Indian? Burma Star or Miss Ollies? It was often a toss-up.
Heightened voices could also be for sporadic karaoke sessions, where we’d channel our high school selves—the only things we had to worry about then was getting good grades so we could get the college education our parents didn’t have the opportunity to receive. You’d embody ODB while rapping: Shimmy shimmy ya, shimmy yam, shimmy yay. And I’d become all three members of TLC, belting out: No, I don't want no scrubs. And together, we’d reminisce on our Caribbean upbringing: Don't worry, about a ting/'Cause every little ting, is gonna be alright.
The week before the diagnosis, I knew things weren’t alright. I was still trying to follow your lead. But with each cough, I felt my chest getting tighter. My own breath, shorter. I’d soon learn that anxieties of the heart will impact the lungs.
When we were on our way to the Fall Festival at the school where I’d just been hired as Assistant Principal, I lost my shit. A symphony of dry coughs competed with Jidenna’s “Classic Man,” from one of our Spotify playlists. You were on the passenger side, crowned with one of your signature tweed pageboy hats from Gourin Brothers, a plaid vintage jacket from the Haight, over a superhero T-shirt to make your look more casual, more Kwame. Your thick beard groomed and oiled—only a few grey hairs back then. You looked like you could’ve been in the “Classic Man” video. Only your constant cough was interrupting your swagger, signaling that the chorus of coughs was no longer a nuisance, but a warning that I was done ignoring.
Lovie, you really need to go to the doctor, I said calmly while dialing down Jidenna. “No, Lovie, I’m fine.” You were tired of my demands to go to the doctor. You kept calling it a “little cold,” but I’d been insisting you see a professional once the random coughs became a chorus almost a month ago. As I accelerated the gas and we transitioned from the 880 N to the 580 W, I could feel myself getting more worked up. You! Need! To! Go! Tothedoctor, Kwa-mee! My voice elevated with every word. If I wasn’t driving, I would’ve clapped out each syllable for emphasis.
“Lovie… Do NOT yell at me,” you warned. Your patience was getting short, but your voice, still even. “Doctors aren’t going to tell me anything I don’t already know.”
Usually, I’d gaze at you with proud eyes when you put on your scientist hat—I was steeped in Black feminist theory and antiracist pedagogy, while you’d dedicated your career to researching a cure for cancer, and, more recently, was doing Alzheimers research at one of the biggest biotech companies in the world. Your work had been published in the most prestigious science journals, and I was proud to be partnered with someone whose mind worked so differently from my own. But, when you acted as though being a scientist made you an MD in moments where your health was an issue, I’d lose my shit.
Just go to the fucking doctor! I yelled.
“Do not cuss at me,” you said firmly. I wanted to remind you that I rarely cussed until I met you, though it was rare to swear at each other. Expletives were reserved for the mundane: “Well look at this little fucker,” you’d say in awe of Trini doing something mischievous. But, that day, the day I screamed at you, I decided to pick my battles and getting to the core of this cough was my priority.
As our car progressed up the 580 W, passing through Emeryville, taking us through Berkeley, getting closer to my school in Richmond, I could feel myself losing my composure. It could be pneumonia or something, Kwame! I was no longer yelling, I was screaming. I’m not fucking kidding! Do you want to die?! (I sounded like my Nana who always warned that death was around the corner: “Babby, put on a coat, or you’ll catch a cold, get pneumonia and die. Cover your chest, or you’ll catch a cold and die. Babby, what’s that cough? You need to call the doctor, so you don’t…”)
You’d had enough of my hysteria. The car held my scream until it faded into the next song on the playlist. You allowed the following track to play before you turned to me and said, “Don’t call me Kwame. I’m Lovie to you.”
I’d been obsessed with your breath from the moment we started sleeping together. When we’d climb into the first bed we shared on a hill in San Francisco, I was reminded of my childhood in Pasadena. Our comforter, an inheritance from your bachelor days, was a bland blue and lacked the bounty that makes beds comfortable. But, nonetheless, we were always warm with our bodies perfectly spooned as one until you were no longer able to sleep on your side and spooning was no longer possible.
Your ability to knock out within seconds made me jealous. While you snored, my active brain competed with my desire for rest: Does mommy have enough money in her account? Is our savings growing fast enough? Are we having enough sex? Eventually, I’d wish my worries away and focus on sleeping. In desperate times, I’d count those sheep from childhood cartoons. But, usually, I’d do what came natural and match your breath—a deep inhale that fills the belly, and the slow release of air until I was hypnotized to sleep, eventually waking to you standing over me, calmly whispering, “Lovie… it’s time to wake up. Your tea is ready.”
My obsession with breath dates back to my primary years when Mommy and I lived in a one bedroom apartment facing out onto one of Pasadena’s tree-lined streets. Our home was a cozy one bedroom apartment. Remnants of Mommy’s Bahamian upbringing filled each room—a purple coral reef she scavenged from the Atlantic, a record player where Marley’s lullabies played on repeat, the continuous smells of rich curries and fried plantain mixed with incense. She would've been considered a hipster today, but back then I simply found her to be odd, especially next to the other mommies. On the rare occasion that she had a day off from work, she’d pick me up wearing a rasta colored jacket and no shoes. At the sight of her, I’d scream Mom!, to which she’d reply, “What, Kirsti Jewel? I’m an island gyal!” I didn’t realize Mommy was a Conchy Joe, until classmates questioned our pairing. I simply thought she was light-skinned, and I, brown, when really I’m light-skinned and she’s white. But that’s a verse for another song.
On the occasion that Mommy didn’t stay up after my bedtime to watch Cheers, we’d climb into our shared bed together and I’d ask as many questions as she’d answer before telling me to go to sleep. Like you, Lovie, it always felt like she fell asleep first, though I’m sure this is only my Kindergarten memory. When I was left alone to my thoughts, I’d do the things cartoons told me to do to slip into dreamland: count to one hundred or count sheep. When numerics didn’t work, I’d listen for her breath, and match mine to hers. The deep inhales of REM and the fluttering exhales of Mommy lost in her dreams hypnotized me into the next morning when she turned up The Flintstones to lure me out of bed.
After your diagnosis, you could no longer sleep on your side. The cough, we’d soon learn, was due to disease producing so much fluid into your right lung that you were essentially drowning in your own body fluid. “A little over a liter in all,” we’d tell doctors as we searched for the perfect care in both western hospitals and offices filled with herbs and drips of Vitamin C. “We’re surprised he’s alive!” they’d say in awe, as if the object of their curiosity wasn’t sitting before them.
A thoracentesis was administered in the hospital, and a long tube pierced the tight skin below your rib, snaking up into your lung. For seven days, we stayed in the hospital, watching the fluid, gummied with blood and poison, seep through the tube. By day, I sat in the chair next to your bed, holding your hand while members of our tribe—the people who went from friends to family during our decade in the Bay—took turns to visit us.
“You got this!” they’d say, trying to cover up the worry in their eyes.
“Nothing can take down The Hoyte,” you’d respond with the confidence of a young person who’d never had an intimate relationship with sickness.
After 10 pm, when the last of the tribe were kindly asked by nurses to leave so we could rest, the chair I spent the day in turned into the cot where I’d try to sleep. As you’d attempt to enter your dreamworld, I’d curl up into a ball, close my eyes and devise a health plan that was borrowed from my mother’s efforts to rid herself of a similar disease. We gotta get into meditation/ change the diet to vegan/plant based—Mommy says the disease feeds off sugar… we must eliminate sugar. And when my mind tired, I’d try to listen for your breath that was inches away, but suddenly camouflaged by shrill beeping machines in the hospital room, an assortment of sounds I simply couldn’t understand.
When the fluid slowed down, we were sent home and given instructions on how to drain the remaining disease. This became a daily routine until the initial experimental drug worked and it was no longer necessary to seep out the poison ourselves. After the tube was removed from your side, your torso remained tender to the touch. A permanent hole, reminiscent of a gun wound remained below your ribs where the tube lived for four months. At night, we tried to go back to our usual positions, you big spoon, me little spoon, but within seconds, a sharp pain surged throughout your torso. I tried spooning you, but it wasn’t the same. We considered changing sides of the bed, but so much had already changed, we couldn’t live with another adjustment.
“Well, then let’s hold hands,” you suggested as my eyes flooded with memories from another thing lost. And so, for the rest of our lives together, we fell asleep with our faces to the ceiling, and our fingers linked into each others’ as one.
✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎
The monthly drives along the coast started the year we were married. “Minimoons,” we called them, to keep us from living in the monotony of busy work schedules and weekends that could easily be swept up with domestic chores. After your diagnosis— three years after our nuptials—these trips became an essential escape from the things we couldn’t control, the diseases that wouldn’t go away—the one that now lived in your lungs and the cancer that has stained this country for generations.
We’d pack the car, with an overly-excited Trini perched on the lap of the person who wasn’t driving, and escape The Town to enjoy Sonoma’s vineyards drunk with Pinots and the Pacific’s navy oceans crashing against its rocks. Music reached out of our open windows so when we were at a stop light, the car next to us had no choice but to listen. We straddled the line of confidence and arrogance when it came to our musical taste, convinced it should be on display for others.
Ragged Point was our favorite place—a village of sorts off Interstate 1, hanging on a cliff above the Pacific, about an hour south of Big Sur. The beginning of the drive out of The Town was tedious and hot with traffic, so we’d play something upbeat like Fela, Bustah or Dilla to counter the drawl of cars moving like molasses. Once the 101 transitioned to the 1, however, the drive turned into vacation. With our Honda Fit properly sandwiched between sheets of rock and blankets of crashing ocean, you’d turn to me and say, “Lovie, put on one of the fairies we like.”
You were usually the one behind the wheel at this point of our adventure. I was too nervous to drive on the side closest to the cliff. Happy to play DJ, I’d scroll through Spotify to decide which “fairy” to choose for this occasion-- Bjork or Florence + the Machine? You called them fairies because you said that they sounded like they belonged in Lord of the Rings. I loved them because, somehow, these two Europeans curated songs in a way that seemed to honor their own ancestry while also taking me back to the pews of the Black churches where I spent my childhood.
If I played Bjork, her ethereal voice laced with electronics eased us into the drive, reminding us to let our shoulders relax, to welcome the air of the ocean, and to soak in the dreamy landscape of the west coast. But when the mood called for Florence + the Machine and her powerful lungs, we’d feel fearless, speeding through the curvy cliffs that were keeping us from being one with the ocean, while taking deep breaths, expanding our lungs to the best of their ability, because we could, and we knew there’d be moments when we couldn’t.
The cover of Florence’s Lungs album, which was released six years before your diagnosis, haunted me differently after we found out that your lungs were infected with disease. Looking at the cover, Florence’s head turns passively to the right, with her eyes closed as if she’s Lady Day breaking our hearts with one of her ballads. Florence’s arms are opened wide in surrender. The viewer’s eyes naturally focus on her chest which is taken over by a large, cardinal, lung pendant weighing heavy from her neck. I’m reminded of both breath and heart by its placement.
I’ve found diagrams of lungs in medical journals that are often various shades of pink and red, but they’re rarely the deep cardinal like on the cover of this album. Florence’s lung pendant is reminiscent of diagrams of hearts from high school textbooks.
(Lovie, did you know that the heart chakra is connected to the lungs?
When our heart chakra is out of balance, it impacts breath.)
I always worried about your heart. Its most significant wound occurred before puberty, when you still lived in Trinidad with two parents, your little sister and a large extended family full of doting aunties and uncles who emulated swagger. Your mother died from brain cancer when you were 10, or was it 11? The exact age of your biggest tragedy shifted, depending on when you were retelling the story. Overall, your memory of what happened before and after her death felt fuzzy in its retelling. But this is no surprise. I get it now. Grief softens memory. It’s the brain's attempt to protect us when all of trauma’s details are too tragic to be recalled. But here are the pieces you remembered:
She convulsed on the kitchen floor. Your father, Papa Hoyte, rushed to her side. You watched from the kitchen doorway as he called 911. One day you had a mother who baked you fresh bread and cradled your hand. The next day, she lived in your heart.
Papa Hoyte—newly widowed and now a single parent—needed to make decisions. The future of two little ones were in his hands. Like the story of many immigrants, he left home first, to secure your new life. You and your sister followed, going to Texas and then to New York, or was it New York and then Texas? You were welcomed to the land of opportunity by relatives you did not know. Eventually— was it weeks, months, or was it years?— you and your sister reunited with Papa Hoyte in the concrete jungle of Long Beach, California.
One minute you were a Trini boy, climbing palm trees, breathing in the air of the sea with your cousins and friends whose skin warmed with the sun. The next minute, an immigrant learning that safety meant keeping distance from police, and looking away when a classmate shows you his gun. Making it home before the streetlights came on was vital. The palm trees of Long Beach don’t sway with ease like those from home.
Throughout our life together, I’d check on your heart: Lovie, have you ever spoken to anyone about your mom? and you’d say, “Lovie, I’m fine. I’ve dealt with that.” And when I’d check in about the loss of home and ask, Do you miss Trinidad? Maybe we should go visit, you’d say, “Lovie, I’m fine. I don’t need to go back.” But it never made sense to me.
In the midst of treatment, I’d check in on your lungs daily: Lovie, how’s your breath? I’d ask, while gingerly putting my ear on the right side of your back like the doctors showed me, listening to your lungs, convinced my ear would detect the advancement of disease before you or any medical professional. During such house calls, you’d take a deep, slow, animated inhale, and carefully release the air with care, gently saying, “Lovie, I’m fine.” This became routine, like making the bed, until I knew it wasn’t fine…. until your oncologist traded in his usual optimism for facts. Stage 4 lung cancer doesn’t go away.
The heart chakra is connected to the lungs.
Breath, connected to the wounds of the heart.
I struggled with a lot of things after you died: remembering details and breathing with fluidity became hard. My breath was the most labored when I was alone in our apartment. Once I became a widow, deadly quiet nights were the norm. Those first months, I’d come home from work, pour a glass of Pinot Noir and sit in the middle of our velvet green couch we’d bought from CB2 a few months before your death. Nothing would be on—no Spotify, no TV—but the silence of your absence was piercing. I’d often stare at our wall of old family photos, with Trini cuddling next to me, confused by your departure, overwhelmed by my tears. The shortness of breath would come and go sporadically, like the lingering symptoms of Covid that I’d experience two and a half years later.
There’s a photo that I’d often focus on during these moments of profound heartache. It's one of you as a little boy riding a tricycle, with your mother—tall, lean, and naturally beautiful—towering next to you. Your mother appears to be mid-laugh, and you appear determined and focused, leaning to the right, learning how to navigate what I assume is a new piece of transportation. Your mother, who I later learn was a Cancer like me, is in a breezy floral dress, with her hair neatly twisted around her crown like how I style my hair sometimes. Both of you are enjoying life’s simple moments, naive to the disease that would separate you prematurely. As I’d stare at the photo, I’d find solace in the hope that you two must be in peace now, pain free and breathing with ease (if breath is even necessary wherever you are) . . .while I sat in our apartment, struggling for air.
On Thursdays, when a few of the tribe would come over to watch Housewives, my breath came easy. Your absence was still so profound to us all, though. “It’s strange not seeing him standing in the kitchen, insisting on fixing us a drink,” Rooney said, or was it Jess? Maybe it was Maddy. We used to insist that you come join us in the living room, but you’d act like you were busy anticipating our next cocktail, interjecting into the conversation from time to time to show us you were listening.
After staying as long as they could (because I’d insist they never leave), it would be time for them to return to their homes. And as soon as I’d see the last one to the door, my breath would labor. My body knew it was time to face our bed. Alone… so painfully alone. I’d slowly remove the bounty of pillows you used to tease me about, peel back the right side of our down comforter and slowly lay down on my side of the bed, reaching my arm to where you used to be.
I’ve often wondered if it would be healthier for me to sleep in the middle of the bed. To begin a new routine. I remember the late, great Grace Lee Boggs saying she started sleeping in the middle of the bed when her husband, activist James Boggs, died after 40 years of marriage. I tried it a couple of times. But by morning, I always ended up on the right side of the bed, curled up in a fetal position.
As I’d try to fall asleep, meditation music on, lavender oil filling the room, I’d attempt to shut off my brain, but my mind would drift: Was I a good wife? Why am I here and he’s not? Lovie, where are you? My chest, heavy with grief, felt like the cardinal lung pendant weighing on Florence’s chest. Sometimes I’d panic, but often I’d surrender to my labored breath. (What’s the worst that could happen? Die? But, then I’d be with you...) When the alarm would ring, reminding me that I’m here and you weren’t, my lungs felt tired-- as if they’d been slapped around in my sleep. I considered going to the doctor, but doctors scared me. They still scare me, and I knew they’d prescribe pills I had no intention of taking.
The night that you died, I started doing research on my fate, quickly learning that a high percentage of widows die within three months after their spouse. This didn’t scare me as much as it should’ve, but when my shortness of breath continued, I decided to reclaim agency in my life where I could, so I turned to yoga.
Those first few weeks of classes were tough. Downward dog was easy until it wasn’t. I didn’t know the difference between Warrior 1 or 2, and when the instructor adjusted my arms, or told me to bend my front knee further, I wanted to say, shut the fuck up, my husband just died, I’m just here so I can learn how to breathe again.
As I struggled through dancer pose and side plank, I’d remind myself that soon I’d get to rest in savasana. But once the instructor invited us to settle into this position, which literally means “corpse pose,” I’d feel anxious. Eyes closed, lying on my back, face to the ceiling, arms and legs limp and tilted to the side, my mind would go dark.
I’d see you lying in the hospital on those final days when I had to spoon-feed you mashed up sweet potatoes when your hands no longer worked because the disease had colonized your spine weeks, maybe months before your death. (Lovie, was there disease on your spine the morning of the earthquake?). And then, I’d see you, again, in your final resting pose, me curled up on the hospital bed next to you, holding your hand and kissing you each time you puckered your lips. I’d hear the nurse who was with us during those final hours tell the members of the tribe who witnessed your last breath, “He was too young to die. He wasn’t ready to leave his wife.” And then, I’d see me lying in our bed, waking up each morning, surprised each day that I was here, and you were not. By the time the instructor lured us back to consciousness with her Tibetan singing bowls, I’d find my mat wet with tears, snot discreetly dripping onto my lip, and I’d pray that no one noticed.
It’s 13 months after your death, and I’m in Brooklyn now, in a small Black owned yoga studio on Fulton street. The yoga instructor—a Black woman in her mid-twenties wearing a headwrap and yoga pants with little melanated bodies in tree pose and dancer pose all over them—is lighting palo santo, reminding me of the incense my mother used to burn. As she lights the stick over and over again, she invites us to dedicate our practice to someone. I’ve never been asked to do this before in a yoga session, but, naturally, I choose you.
When the instructor gently invites us to open to Warrior 2 over Sade’s lullabies, I wing my arms open and push back my shoulders to open my heart to the ancestors’ offerings. They’ve held me since you’ve been gone; they’ve held me so tight, I’ve wondered, are you now one of my ancestors? Do husbands become ancestors once they cross over?
The instructor asks us to hold this pose, but notices some of us getting weak in our Warrior 2. She reminds us to think about the person we’ve dedicated our practice to. This will not be the only time an instructor reminds me to think of you. Each time, I will think of your infectious laugh when it was laughing at one of Trini’s antics, and I will think about you in the hospital when you struggled for breath, but still breathed. I will think of you when you rapped with ODB and sang along with Florence’s vocals, and I will think of you when you took your last breath right after kissing me. And every time I think of you, regardless of the pose I’m in, I will extend my limbs longer and open my heart. And I will repeat each breath, remembering you, honoring you, breathing for you.
A year and a half after you’ve transitioned, some seven months after moving to New York, the world is hit with that virus that attacks the lungs. We are told to stay in our homes, and many of us do. I am full of fear that I will get Covid, and have bouts of panic because I know what it looks like to be hooked up to ventilators and to slowly lose breath. I worry I will die alone, and wonder who will care for Trini? Just when we think we’re living in the worst of times, the other pandemic, or rather, the cancer of this country jolts more people awake. For some, it seems to be their first time learning of this chronic disease, which is even more infuriating for those of us who’ve lived with America’s racism all along.
I roll my mat along the window and I face the wall with photos of my ancestors. I open up my laptop and click on a zoom link. I am greeted by an instructor who is a Cancer like me and who also knows grief intimately. I open each practice, inviting you in, breathing for you, holding poses for you. It is in my home, in Biggie’s old neighborhood in Brooklyn, that I learn to balance. The key, I learn, is not only to silence your mind, but it’s also to trust that you can hold yourself, alone, even when your body quivers and shakes, desperate for balance. And when you fall, you forgive yourself, and you do it again. At the end of class, when I land in savasana, I let everything go. I accept that my mind will wander. I accept those wounds of mine that scab over, at times, but become fresh again. I accept that two and a half years later, I still cry in this pose, sob in this pose. But more importantly, I accept that when I lay in corpse pose, I breathe. I breathe for those who need support from ventilators. I breathe for those whose breath was stolen by this country’s cancer. I breathe for you, my love, and I learn, once again, what it means to breathe for me.
Contributor’s Notes
Kirsti-Jewel is a former Bay Area school leader who recently accepted a role as the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at an independent school in Manhattan. She is a 2020 Kweli Fellow and she enjoys writing nonfiction for both children and adults. Her writing centers Black love, Black joy and Black resistance, and she has a forthcoming children’s book about Juneteenth that will be released in 2022 with Penguin Random House. She currently lives in Biggie’s neighborhood in Brooklyn with her dog, Trini, and their favorite thing to do is to open up the windows and listen to the music their neighbors are playing.
