Praise Dance for the Purple Downpour

The cassette danced around my mother’s Camry
To the percussion of a road that we weren’t on
Demanding space
Demanding recognition
Rattling like a world unhinged,
bursting from his plastic barriers
Begging to be rewound, studied,
captured in the black hands of a black girl in the backseat.
What a world to be in, I thought!
If purple raindrops of royalty could never stop,
the lightning must fly like lavender pedals.
He stayed by my side the rest of the trip
Until my mother asked for him, reaching back
the lyrics catapulting from her heart
the speakers
her lips
Listen to this part,
she would say.
He kills it!
Contorting her fingers all over the steering wheel like guitar strings
and madness
Her voice and his riffs would wrap around the open road
and choke that empty space–
the miles between us and home
cracking the chains off my mother’s memory
Stretching her face to the place that many artists go once they
truly find themselves
I never forgot this praise dance for the downpour
This pull towards freedom
that my mom and him translated for me so early
in my artistic journey
That response to the calling
To find one’s self is not just for the sake of being comfortable in this world
But for the purpose to unravel into something more
With Gratitude,
Tayllor Johnson
Creative and Administrative Assistant to
Kevin Powell and BK Nation