It had been a hellish week.

On Monday
my lonely and tired AfricanAmerican husband
told me, as gently as possible,
that what I had hoped was a temporary separation
is to be extended into perpetuity.

This separation had been scheduled to terminate
when my Fetal Alcohol daughter turns eighteen
and can move into a new, more therapeutically endowed, home
not our non-group home
which could not feel like a private home to him
and to a more peacefully vulnerable me.

He told me his autonomy of residential sight
and sound
and smell,
temperature and feel,
thought and absence of forced transparent thought,
has grown ever more compelling for him,

Like a new life system
organically emerging from calcified minerals
mixed with melted wet.

This permanent separation,
less about not wanting to share a roof and walls
and multicultural floors
and more about wanting a more private
monotheistic habitat.

I had been working on my adopted daughter’s emergency group home application;
Her eighteenth, and first qualifying, birthday was Friday
of this same hellish week
filled with demands,
as usual,
but more so,
more self-prophetically entitled now;

A “big [supremely self-disempowering] girl”
as multiply messaged from school
and therapists
and family,
jonesing to live with submissive peers
who will best be lesser care receivers
as she intends to appropriate all care giving staff,

Demanding preferred foods,
and music
and stories
and dance,
and diaper change
and bed
and bath times
ignoring needs of lesser beings;

Like living with a constantly ticked off Gaia
showing us who’s our jealous Boss
in response to our climate endangering ways
of patriarchal colonization
disrespecting matriarchal communion,
ecological creolization.

Demanding routines she and I have evolved
since she was five,
unable to see up,
only downstream,
unable to hear well,
unable to speak in consonants
articulate enough to defy caregiver ignorance,
lack of subservient cooperation,
submission to her aggressively iron will,
triggering every slaveholder
property owner
reactionary nerve in my husband’s long-term
matriarchal-limned
unnerved memory.

Our more cooperative and trust-building relationship
soon took care of Gaia’s communication problems
but we created, thereby,
a princess entitled ‘I win so you lose’ monster
of immediate and really loud
NEED!

Yet, now that she is maturing to leave this nest,
how much do I need her
to keep me safely home at night
and off the larger terrifying climate stage
of degenerating ecopolitical performance?

On the following Sunday morning,
I was to sing “Let Your Little Light Shine”
a less popular spiritual,
and at least not unnatural,
gospel message;

A sung prayer from enslaved history,
humiliating origins surviving valleys of vulnerable despair
by holding up
and out
dim fading lights of hope,
sometimes accessible from other enslaved properties
with more resilient hope in green and brown and black
communion.

On Saturday night
my heart spoke of grief
lost in deep dark valleys
isolated
abandoned
down-sized
empty-nested
shallow-chested
ancient old person despair,

And my lungs sagged
pushing against narrow edges of freezing panic

Terror about forgetting left-brain words
and reminders of past sung and danced solo performances
not nearly as fun
enriching
fulfilling
health wealthy
as past group participation
in full-nested harmony
synergy
resonance
regenerativity
sacred communions spiritual
while naturally co-present

Green
and brown
and black,
ultra-nonviolet
and transparently clear.

On Sunday morning,
after earning a strategically planned
full night’s rest,
I felt much worse

Unable to imagine leaving my sanctuary
much less singing
much less performing
a song longing for the Lord
to shine even the faintest ray of hope
down into this valley of well-earned despair,

A grey climate of hopelessness,
nihilistic thoughts,
narcissistic preoccupations
trapped in a shrinking fragile egocentrism.

I took an anti-depressant
which got me to the church on time
but now feeling anxiously disembodied
within my own Beloved Sanctuary
too universally white
straight
and too removed from outside green
and family brown
and EarthTribe Native black resonant voices,
fragrances,
touch,
tasting and seeing.

I could not remember words,
or think of alternative reasonable sounds,
could not find my opening pitch,
felt deserted by a cappella
absence of accompaniment,
by a choir relegated to background support services
rather than foreground cooperative resonance
of care giving
co-passioning care receiving.

But, there was something else
bad,
REALLY bad,
a repugnance that stayed with me
through rehearsal,
through first
and then final performance
and on through the return home
after a technical tepid success
lacking the resonance of producing music
transcending rhythm and pitch and lyrics
demanding better held and managed light systems
for my self-isolating despair

Afraid of drowning
in this internal river valley.

Although not sure what happened Sunday night,
I awoke next morning to emotional fragility,
again
to fears of too much aloneness, loneliness,
worries about ageing in a place not quiet enough
from road rage
and too demanding of soil
and water
and energy stewardship,
warm accompaniment,
propriety of grace,
cooperative well-being.

What was different, on this reawakening,
was recognizing my,
and our,
monocultural misappropriation,
supremacist ideation
of “Let your little light shine”
as if we are, and I am,
the Lord’s great solo hope
for all the autonomous
disconnected
apartheid
indigenous nature/spirit
EarthTribe life-systems
of healthy care giving/receiving
singing and dancing in revolving circles
of gospel fire,

Choired resonantly together
in active shared home harmonies,
extending families back through enslaved ancestors
reminding an AfroCentric Lord
this light begins
from hope sung dance together
with multiculturally resonant intelligence

Leaving no one behind
trying to soulfully enlighten
my darkest valley of despair.