Dark night, late night, purple-black sky. An apartment rooftop with the view of a downtown cityscape. Stillness and warmth, a humid summer coming through. Light pollution blocks the stars, but the city lights are yellow and stark, a soft map of a changing world. Afiya, a black woman in her late thirties, wearing a sad smile, is sitting on the rooftop ledge next to another black woman, Keesha, mid-thirties. They share a bottle of wine, passed between them, and watch the city below.

 

A siren wails in the distance, breaks the quiet.

 

 

Afiya

Wanna know what I’ll remember most?

 

Keesha

Tell me.

 

Afiya

Me and you in the bright yellow summertime. Dancing at that old Dole factory. The noise, like it is now, sirens cracking against the night like a breakbeat. Our footfalls rushing against the pavement will always be my favorite 90s slow jam.

 

Keesha

I’ll remember the blues. The color and the music. Feeling so good moving in the hot sweaty dark of it. Mama working late, and me, you, and the girls, covered by the light of the stars, hearts thump-thump-thumping with the rhythm. Our pulses ricocheting like some of my daddy’s swing-time jazz.

 

Afiya

I’ll remember feeling alive and knowing it. Running with Eddie Boy and yelling fuck the police and meaning it. I wanted to be unforgettable, unthinkable. Poor and black and girl and completely impossible. You get me?

 

Keesha

Sis, I get you.

 

Afiya

What do you still believe in?

 

Keesha

You and me and the spinning world.

 

Afiya

You know, I’ve been dream-walking lately. Lost in other people’s dreams, I feel like a puzzle, my oldest pieces gone missing. I think I’ve been stolen again, or maybe I’m just losing myself. You used to say we look like diamonds on a dark sea floor. But I think we look more like coal in a mountaintop. Or maybe we are actually the canaries in the mines, dropping mid-flight to the ground. Maybe they sent us in first to die.

 

 

A flash of blue and red strobe police lights in an alley below; both women turn their eyes toward it. Watch, wary.

 

 

Keesha

How does it make you feel?

 

Afiya

Like my breath can’t reach my lungs. Like I’m forgetting how to breathe in the dark. Like I can’t remember the taste of the rain.

 

Keesha

They say obsidian is just the universe caught in volcanic rock.

 

Afiya

And what’s caught in the dim blue wound of my chest?

 

Keesha

All the things we’ve ever longed for.

 

Afiya

The thing I loved most was the curl of your hair during the summer. The way the heat unlocked the forbidden kinks. How I wrapped your braids around your head like a crown.

 

Keesha

I was the lost princess.

 

Afiya

And these are the fairy tales we’ll one day write on our lovers’ backs. We were here, we were real, we existed.

 

Keesha

Maybe all myths are real.

 

Afiya

Is that what we’ll say to our daughters when we tell them to close their eyes?

 

Keesha

We tell them Malcolm and Martin were preaching the same thing by the end.

 

Afiya

We tell them we are the cursed beasts in the heart of the dark. Please don’t fear us.

 

Keesha

Our alabaster teeth. Our obsidian skin.

 

Afiya

We who walked the streets before the sun ever rose.

 

Keesha

We’re the stories this city will never tell.

 

 

A long pause.

 

 

Keesha           

Hey sis, can you taste it?

 

Afiya

What? The music? The night air?

 

Keesha

The rain.

 

 

The two women look up. A soft rain has begun to fall. Leaning back, they open their mouths to the sky.