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Welcome to My Front Porch - a substack publication. Occasionally I will cross-post, but if you want to stay abreast of my writing on a regular basis, please subscribe.
Introduction
My mama said there used to be houses on every side of that little bit of street. A short, one-way road that spilled out at a T-intersection. No place for a community to spring up but life (Black folks) find a way. My mama said she and her brothers used to rip and run till the lights came on and sometimes later than that. Every repast. Every birthday. Every first kiss. First fight. First fall. Right on that street.
It changed a lot by the time I came along. When I visited in the summers, I kept up the tradition of rippin and runnin’, but I watched the other houses fall one by one and give birth to empty grass lots that once held people’s whole lives.
But not ours. About halfway down on that left side, through it all, was a big yellow house with a screened-in porch and white framed windows that looked like chiclet teeth all across the front. My grandfather (Poppy) and my grandmother Lenora bought that house. With that porch (and the greens growing in the back), they’d managed to bring a bit of the South with them to the North.
My grandmother’s time came early. She didn’t get to see many of us, but Poppy did. He watched all his seeds spring up in the ground around him right from his squeaky seat on the front porch - even those that took to the wind like me. The porch was just a scattered collection of plastic chairs - some worse off than others - and a box fan in the summer.
It wasn’t much of nothing, really, except to us, it was everything.
Generations of my family built a living altar on that porch. Offered up our tears, our laughs and cussed a few people out, too. Received folks with open arms who stopped by unexpectedly. Sighed because we needed this rain. Tore open freeze pops and spit the tiny piece of plastic into the corner.
Got BBQ sauce on the floor and spilled (more than one) glass of wine water. Prayed with the records playing. Watched a riot tear the city apart. Rocked every last baby to sleep in the rocking chair.
Every moment of my life when the wind blew me back into town, I came up that street to see my grandfather smiling and waiting for me - right there on that porch. Every year until he passed.
For reasons only known to God, what I have left of a place that has felt the footsteps of so many generations…is a jar of dirt and ashes collected in the desperate attempt to sit one more time in that raggedy-ass plastic chair. It stood vacant for three years like a headstone until the fire. That was it. The earth called it back.
And when it did, it took me, too.
Why this? Why now?
A friend asked me what it might look like to create my own space for writing. My ancestors gave me the idea - what better place to have a conversation than a front porch? A space to sit with folks to gossip, talk about who did the body, love, heartbreak, the weather, what happened the other day, and a story from way back that changes every time you tell it. I want to peep out over the top of my glasses and ask who is that coming up the street?
Welcome to My Front Porch, a little street in the corner of this internet that might not look like much, but it’s something to us. As my people say - come on in, take your coat off, and stay a while.
There is no niche, but because of who I am as a person, you can expect it to be full of feelings, love, and nonsense.
Thank you. You have no idea what it means for you to stop on by.