A Self Libation

Religiosity and spirituality are barely needed for a space to become sacred. All you really need is intent and a jar of water. Twice before I have partaken in the African ritual of pouring libation: once during the Women of Color Retreat in the spring of my sophomore year, and then again during the Loyola Rising ceremony last April.

The ritual of pouring libation is fairly simple. Those present gather in a circle around some sort of object (in my experience, a plant) and recite names of the dead who they would like to call into that space, while someone pours water [into the object] after each name is said. It is meant to honor one’s ancestors, to give homage to those who have come before us. It is a means of creating community, a oneness between both strangers and friends.

In this moment I perform a self libation, a calling into existence all of my past selves, the ones who I have shed –have grown out of, have been shoved out of– as I stitch myself into a new skin, swaddled into a piecemeal blanket of flesh that barely makes a whole. The process has been gory but so many times has it been necessary– the doings and undoings of a self who no longer served me.

I call them here to witness the growth that has come since them and all the growth that will come now and after; the growth that has barely been tapped into, the growth that is both intentional and accidental. I call them here to feast in the wonder of all that awaits, to look each other in the eye as they pass their plates with a sense of recognition that only comes with slowly getting to know oneself. I call them here to feast on their lives, on our lives, on mine. I call them here to thank them for all they did and did not become so that I could begin again today.

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Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat. 

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine, Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life. 

-Derek Walcott