Jeremiad by Della Orrey

Della Orrey

COMPOSER AND POET

Poem and image series by Della Orrey

We are honored to include Della Orrey as one of the contributors for our first issue. Della’s voice which is powerful and silky, resonates as she reflects on her mixed-race identity in the context of growing awareness around Blackness.

She writes these words in the heat of the moment, in a world of tension, cries for justice, and the ongoing exposure of present-day oppression. In the midst of her own activism and the tumultuous aftershocks of the killing of George Floyd around the world and in her own personal life, Della generously lends her time and her words in a poem submission to Like a Prayer

“Jeremiad”

You caught me on the brink of insanity.

Or wrenching my heart free, desperate to do different things for different results.

This seems a concept simple enough. Yet - in a land where time slows and conversations seldom reach outside of the agreeable familiar patterns – I’m slowed by thick oozing reluctance to admit these strange and new truths.

Buried wounds piled on top of each other stacked high and deep are now laid bare, with a white awakening demanding to see, listen, (miss)understand, capitalize, reduce and reject.

I don’t know how to walk this earth no longer shackled by the ability to uphold another's comfort over my own. Screaming in my ear is the constant internal assessment of what is truly worth fighting for, and at what cost?

This blindness is the pestilence that depths caverns into even my own kin.

I’ve felt choked by lack of understanding from the ones who raised me as I fight to disentangle myself from their chains.

You taught me to question?

You taught me to seek hard truth!

When did you give up?

When did your soul grow weary to the point where it was just about surviving the narrow lanes handed by society’s hollow promises at the end of a lifetime’s labour.

When did that become good enough for you.

This pain is a festering sickness, infection that keeps me awake, and wakes me early to the same sliver of wondering if today will be different?

A prayer to heal my foundation lay an exposure so broad that the climactic grand reveal found me scrambling for refuge in the fact that I could still breathe.

I didn’t numb myself, maybe that’s me getting stronger.

Never before has the world broke open and charged it’s way into the deepest parts of me.

I merely joined a cry for freedom started long before my time. Echoed by thousands throughout the ugly chasms of time edited for the erasure of whoever thought my skin disposable worthless property.

Here I stand, hundreds of years worth of defiance coursing through my veins and my strength is collapsed and hollowed out.

I do not have clarity, the contents of this chest are sprawled and scattered with too many knocking at my door demanding entrance, demanding answers, demanding, demanding, pleading, asking – STOP.

I need time, I need a revelation for the future I need more patience, even more forgiveness, even more love, even more character, even more steadfastness, and even more hope.

For that I am angry – furious even! But hate is too heavy a burden for one built to receive and give love.

Heavenly Father, keep my heart soft.

So I will continue to sit in this and receive, somehow waiting and listening to the still small voice.

The earthquake, fire and storm still rage, but I know that it’s the quiet, the small waking hours where I catch a glimpse of Your heart.

I have the peace that surpasses, understanding will come.

Amen.