Shade is a place: relief is my form
Coming back to Virginia takes the time
it takes I decide this time in Virginia
I will cooperate with my body
Outside it’s almost Arbor Day
and there is no riot I dance with people
who are not people but forsythia
and redbuds blooming An unbearable
compassion blooms in the trees
What is my entry point into the deemed
errant biome of my body? Shade takes
my breath away and puts it back
inside me Relief is my form
releaf by leaf by leaf
until the last trunk is silent
until quiet happens to us all
Let’s loiter the rest of our lives
MaKshya Tolbert (any/all) is a poet, potter, and shade walker who recently made her way back to Virginia, where her grandmother raised her. She is New City Arts’ 2024 Fellowship Season Guest Curator, is a 2024-2026 Fireline Fellow (Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts), and serves on the Charlottesville Tree Commission. Shade is a place is her first book. In her free time, she is elsewhere–where Eddie S. Glaude Jr. calls that “physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe.”
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