There
The people who love us are always there
No matter how far away they seem.
Even if they have to appear in dreams,
They are there.
Right there.
As if that moment was pregnant
With their anticipation,
They are there waiting,
When calamity becomes impatient,
As if this is the sole purpose
For which they were created,
As if they lived there. Right there.
Those who are there for us,
For some inexplicable reason,
Even when they shouldn't be,
Even when they couldn't be
And impossibility disconnects us
The fact that they accept us
Connects us,
And they are there.
Right beside us on the stairs
Ready to climb the long way there,
Sitting beside us on the chair,
When the news is too much to bear,
And they don’t have to be
But dare
Not to ever not be there
Even if there is everywhere
Because there is no traveling time for care.
It is there because it is aware,
And no matter how much it shares,
It always has more to spare,
And even when it is depleted beyond repair...
It is there.
Kindaka Jamal Sanders is a writer from Selma, Alabama. His writing is visceral, vivid, deep, poignant, and sometimes even comedic. His writing also reflects his hometown's conflicting legacies and the multiple worlds he grew up in. He grew up around doctors and lawyers, black radicals and nonviolent civil rights legends, politicians and anarchists, realists and college students from around the world, on the one hand, and on the other, criminals, drug dealers, sex workers, shooters, and hustlers whose most basic goal in life was mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual survival. He sucked it all up. His writing expresses the pain, suffering, and joy of the broadest swaths of American others and their counterparts around the world. He has always been fascinated with the process of turning words into feelings and pictures and the inherent power of perspective to transform good into bad, bad into good, right into wrong, wrong into right, left into right, and up into down. He has written dozens of poems, short stories, creative nonfiction pieces, and a screenplay. He has produced records and written dozens of songs. Additionally, he wrote, produced, and directed a play. He has published several pieces in the past year and a half, including "Atlas, Move" (poem) in IHRAF Publishes, "Old Damn Gaines" (creative nonfiction) in Barren Magazine, "Soul Under Siege" (flash fiction) in Literary Stories, and "The Whitening" (short story) in Wilderness House Literary Review, The Paint that is the World (4 selected poems) in Literary Yard, and "Give Me Your Black" (poem) forthcoming in I-70 review, Birds Hustling In May (6 selected poems) in Literary Yard, and Black Madonna (8 selected poems) in Literary Yard.