By Christo Owens
The quilt I resonated with, “African Burial Site,” but I come to it really different.
I come to it from my heart.
I ain’t got nothing left.
When I saw that quilt, that’s what I thought about. I ain’t got nothing left.
And I know the assignment said one hundred words, but it comes to more than one hundred words.
The ground is more than one hundred words.
See I ain’t got nothing left.
I told Mommy, I said, what? What?
I ain’t got nothing left.
After going through that surgery, that rehab, the memory! Them people!
Your pearls, my pearls, your opal, that blue opal, them jades! All mother’s, all of them!
Mother’s quilt. Mother’s quilt! She made it for me! Terry’s quilt! Chucky’s quilt! Ricky’s quilt, all of them, they just gone now!
I ain’t got nothing left!
And Mother said—“
Child, what’s wrong with you?
I said, “What! What you mean Ma? I got something left?”
And she said, “You got breath in your body and living Spirit!
Yeah, and you got hope!
You got a whole lot of hope! What they got? Nothing but the dirt, the dirt that God made them from and now taking them back to!”
Ahh! So! There’s a smile to go along with that hope!
The hope and the smile I can carry by the grace of God!
And so you can, too!
