Marguerite Annie Johnson, or Maya

You wrote a book entitled "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes". On the cover you smile, wearing a black head scarf as you look at someone in the background or perhaps a memory in the distance.

Why did I think you were a writer-turned-cook-part-time poet? How did I not explore you long before now?

It happens this way often; someone noteworthy passes and the world collects favorite reminders to speak of what you meant to a culture, a people, and as a person. We enunciate your legacy because we know that by speaking it we won't forget too soon. That by saying your words we might be able to carry along your spirit a bit longer and hopefully, always.

But how did I reduce you by not really knowing your story? Because of your death I found a breath of life in your writings and became enamored and humbled and stunned at what you present in them - the little bit I know!

I did not know you had a son by age 16,
became a "shaker dancer in a nightclub to support him",
cooked hamburgers,
was a madam for lesbian hookers,
and unsuccessfully tried prostituting yourself.
(mashable.com)

I did not know that you took that dark time which augmented your life and refused to hide those experiences, that you entitled a work "Come Together in My Name" so that, "[a]ll those grown people, all those adults, all those parents and grandparents and teachers and preachers and rabbis and priests who lie to the children can gather together in my name and I will tell them the truth. Wherever you are, you have got to admit it and set about to make a change. That's why [you] wrote the book. It's the most painful book [you've] ever written" (teentalkingcircles.org).

You invited people to gather under your stories in your name and stare at your life so that we could know a little bit of truth in part of you. So that we could know perfection is not innate, like so many of us are led to believe.

That we can rest and know there is still a time to get up. All is not lost.

You brave woman. You invited your written words against your own reputation to care for those of us who needed to walk alongside someone, someone who knows that life is messy and confusing at times. Who knows that you can stand up and walk away from a thing. You are a person whose words have the power to help lift a soul from soot.

I hope you are dancing.

Roses

Tonight I remember the fake wood on the walls of my childhood bedroom. The off-white wrought iron bed frame stood against them in the corner. Opposite were pink walls brushed with white as though to look like roses.

How do I explain the smell of my room when the windows stayed open all night, without bringing you along to the past?

The air was never sticky or humid and the temperatures dropped low without the sun, even in the summer. Cows parading below the second-story window each morning and I would lay in bed and watch them as I awoke.

The pastures,
The grass, the dirt, and my clean sheets.
The wooden floors of a house built in 1906, stained and varnished over and over again. The grainy feel they had from a lack of sanding.

The lacy bed cover atop my pink blanket on my bed and cool, crisp sheets underneath.

Long hours into the night when I could not sleep; this is when the gold-plated light on my stand would keep me and my books company as we ventured along trails and traveled miles together.

Tonight I am here, writing these words and hoping to travel long miles backwards, to remember a time when sights and smells and touch were all that comprised life. There were no harsh feelings, there were no burdens too heavy, there were only moments to capture and hide away.

To talk about one's thoughts, feelings, or experiences with others

Carve out your story and serve me its lines. Tell me about how your father's grey hair shone in the light those summer nights when he hunched and did dishes at the kitchen sink. Tell me how your mother's hands looked when she held a small needle and sewed patches on your worn jeans,

or how your brother's gums were bright and pink when he lost those teeth.

Tell me how your childhood home smelled, how your spirits rose along with the breeze from the sea through its windows. Or how the linoleum on the bathroom floor cracked and yellowed with the years, how you saw it out of the corner of your eye that year when you turned ten and blew out birthday candles with a group of elementary-school friends.

Tell me. I want to hear. And then listen, because I want to tell.

Synthesis

Hand me that lavender, love. I want to hold its petals and bracts. I want to breathe in its delicious smell from my cupped hand and savor the moment that becomes suspended with its aroma.

Sleep sweetly, sleep soundly. Dream of lemon rinds and cloudless skies.

Do not find complaint, for this life is as the topsoil in a a farmer's hands, rich with decayed organisms and roots and life; his fingerprints become black and stained with velvet dirt that makes up the Earth's chewy crust.  This life is rich. It is messy and dark, it is teaming with rot as it hosts the existence of multitudes.

This life is like the topsoil in a farmers hands, cradled, creviced, and completely dirty.

Rest now. Your lavender grew from this life. Every good thing does.