Written piece
Where I Begin
Nickeva Eve-Benjamin
Bahamas
About this piece
This piece journeys through the growth and discovery of self and home.
From a pine box, I grew.
In wet raked dirt, I played.
Up hog plum trees, I climbed.
Barefoot,
Hardfoot,
Brown Bahamian gal,
True, with a touch of the unknown from whoever my grandfathers were
And wherever they came from.
This wooden box, home to three generations of matriarchs, was never mine.
Nothing was.
Was never theirs either.
All loaned and shared and passed down.
All, except some words crafted by a child’s hand in the spare pages of a schoolbook,
Silent,
Unseen,
But stitched strong,
Like my daughter’s kicks to my belly.
Red Bahamian baby,
True, with a touch of her father’s Caribbean spice.
Her wails boom like the bass on Bay,
Heartbeat
to
Heartbeat.
Her fingers clutch at conch shell dreams,
Discarded on the wayside,
Encrusted with thick layers,
But coiled strong,
Like these old pages with new words.
And in the shimmering oceans of her eyes,
I dive,
Barefoot,
Hardhead,
Beyond sun, sand, and clear blue seas,
Weaving the currents of past and present,
Around the pretty corals,
Toward the beating heart
of
Home.