During the away game against Delasalle Sammy dislocated his shoulder and pushed it back into place without telling anyone. He collapsed five plays later; something can be out of place and still be inside. When he fell, he fell like a building, slowly and into himself until there is only the quiet where a window used to be. There is a difference between hurt and injured, something can be out of place and still be inside. If we know anything it’s that. Let me clarify what I mean by we: when Sammy’s shoulder buckled beneath his own desire the amount of Black boys who were Seniors and had two working shoulders decreased by 25%. Sammy failed the way a building fails, the rust’s appetite working its way through the walls of him. They took him to the sideline; someone took his helmet off for him, someone brought him water, someone asked him how much it hurt as if he wasn’t going to lie. Sammy didn’t talk much, fuck he look like telling the truth when we down by 14? I am not blameless here, I didn’t think to hug him then. I prayed that that would not be me. I prayed that what ails me would be invisible enough to stay in. I tore my groin that game trying to protect someone else. I tried to save somebody, I have not walked the same since. Sammy cried for what felt like hours with the game passing behind him, each thick braid spilling across his face. The body is a building we had been inside our entire lives, somewhere beneath Sammy one joint fumbled at the other in a way that could be mistaken for lovers. But I said the body is a building so Sammy too was a building; inside his arm one joint tried to fit into another, pulsing, desperate as a sparrow making an exit with its skull.

THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE ONCE BOMBED CITY: PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS OF ANCESTRAL MEMORY THROUGH THE LENS OF RACIAL BATTLE TRAUMA

ABSTRACT: