Elmina Fort Lagoon, Elmina, Ghana

Joy you forgot you were allowed to have.

The water was right there.

And so was everything else

that makes a boy forget

what he was supposed to be doing.

Nobody taught him to perform joy.

Nobody gave him permission to have it.

It was just there.

Undisturbed.

This is what Black Joy looks like

when nothing is trying to take it.

This water once carried our ancestors away from the shore 

where joy learned to go underground.

And yet —

This is what we are returning to.