Fluid Dreams: A Juneteenth Reflection
On Juneteenth, we honor the long, winding journey from bondage to liberation—both the collective struggle and the personal reclamation of joy. Fluid Dreams envisions this freedom not as a destination, but as a state of being: weightless, sovereign, whole. The woman submerged beneath the waves becomes a sacred metaphor for our ancestral resilience—unshackled from history’s chains, she floats in a realm untouched by violence or erasure. Her closed eyes speak not of sleep, but of awakening—of a rest that has been long denied and now deeply deserved. In her tranquil surrender to the sea, we witness a rebirth: a homecoming to the self, to spirit, to the memory of those who crossed vast oceans dreaming of this very breath. On this Juneteenth, may we too rise from the water, radiant and salt-kissed, carrying forward the truth that freedom lives not just in laws, but in the embodied grace of our becoming.
Saltwater Psalms
for Juneteenth
She drifts in the calm beneath memory’s tide,
a woman carved from dusk and sunlit foam.
No chain can reach where the ocean hides—
in the deep, she claims her body as home.
Each breath becomes a hymn without shame,
each ripple, a psalm that carries her name.
Her skin, a gospel of golden fire,
lit by grace, not by any brand.
She moves through water like ancestral choirs,
their songs blooming from sea to sand.
Juneteenth lives in her rising soul—
a freedom born beyond control.
The sea welcomes her truth like kin,
its silence rich with sacred lore.
It gathers her in the tide’s soft spin,
calling her name forevermore.
Currents open where she moves through—
a legacy shaped by what is true.
Below, old chains sink into sand,
their weight no longer hers to bear.
Above, the sky unfolds its hand,
offering breath, offering care.
She swims through light that breaks like dawn,
each motion a promise carried on.
Her locs extend like a storm-born crown,
each strand a path her people paved.
She dances where the drowned once lay,
lifting songs their spirits saved.
No more shadows, no need to flee—
she moves in the fullness of her decree.
So let her rise, salt-gold and whole,
from water’s womb to morning’s shore.
The past walks with her, fierce and bold,
its lessons written in every pore.
Juneteenth pulses beneath her skin—
a dream once dreamed, now lived within.