I have not known rivers. I have never experienced rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. I am not as lucky as Langston, even in the context of metaphors and similes. But my soul has grown deep with sadness.
I am the artistic director for a community service group at University of Chicago called P.A.E.C.E. (Performing Art for Effective Civic Education). This past weekend we had our first performance at a community center on the south side of Chicago (Gary Comer Youth Center). The student’s performance—titled Don’t Shoot , I wanna grow up—went well, it was a selection of original poems, skits, and stories that presented the desensitization of violence amongst youth in the black community.
After the performance was over half the students went home with their parents, and all but one took public transportation home. Which left Marcus (I have changed his name for his privacy). Shortly after everyone left, Marcus explained that he couldn’t go home tonight. When asked why, he gave an anecdote about him and his mother getting into a fight earlier that day. “It wasn’t the first time” he explained while lifting up his shirt and revealing to us the teeth marks that that dug into his skin, leaving a stapled ring of scabs around his shoulder. Marcus made my soul grow deep like a river—with sadness. At the end of the night some of the other PAECE mentors and I took Marcus to McDonalds and dropped him off to spend the night with his uncle.