Meditation on "i was born with twelve fingers" by Lucille Clifton
& Revision as an e x p a n s i o n in how we do language & life
Originally posted on my personal Instagram on March 11, 2022
I don’t know if exquisite abundance is a thing…but imma make it one. I turned 21 back in October and I have been fighting to invite more of this in my life. Through establishing work boundaries, boundaries in my social life, & trying to figure out how to rest in celebration even when it feels like I have to reach back for several batons before winning the race. A lot of my creative work has been battling with this.
I love how Flo Milli celebrates her current & future wins cause she’s that bitch. Morrison always reminds me of lessons that I know but sometimes forget in the chaos of life.
And like Clifton…
I was born with more fingers than I was supposed to have. If that’s not a divine gift/sign that I was meant to inherit an abundant life then I don’t know what is. Here’s to finally being able to “take what we want with invisible fingers.”
Morrison, reading from the Song of Solomon clip -- “if you Surrender to the wind you can ride it”
Flo Milli on Genius talking about her exquisite qualities
Watch out for the full moon of Sonia shinnin’ down on ya poem
This is now the second piece I have written after a prolonged period of time has passed. The first piece I revisited was A Salve for Black Folk Shamed for Resting. Something in my life happens & I may begin to make space for thoughts to trail on the page. Or, I may not have the privilege to carve out that space cause life keeps moving. Even if, I did manage to record something in the moment sometimes not enough time has passed to hear the words my body is speaking. This is where the process of revision, or as I like to call it
e x p a n s i o n
comes into play. It is my right to expand upon an Instagram post from a year ago & a text from a power-hungry high school teacher. By expanding upon my initial thoughts I am both grieving & giving that version of myself grace. I give myself grace for doing the best I could with my feelings & grieving that those feelings lived a long life in my body. Yet, there is a message of hope that I receive knowing that I can always e x p a n d. By knowing this truth, I know that future me will always love, care for, & guide younger me. I am always catching & holding younger versions of myself through the e x p a n s i o n process.
One of my favorite writers, also hailing from the U.S. South via Mississippi, Kiese Laymon is known for his revision process. In fact, Kiese often republishes revised pieces of his writings. In his conversation with Tressie McMillian Cotton, she refers to his approach as “revision as an ethic” not just for writing but the art of life. One of the most profound things Kiese said originally appeared in a Vox Interview.
“Revision requires witnessing & testifying. Witnessing & testifying required rigorous attempts at remembering & imagining. If revision was not God, revision was everything every god ever asked of believers.”
So here I am, once again, making myself available to the task of believing. When I first came across this video of Lucille reading i was born with twelve fingers, I was shocked. Not shocked as in held in suspended disbelief, but shocked to have found someone else outside of my family. Before she begins to read, she explains how many people have asked her what is the title a metaphor for. To which Lucille responds, “this is not a metaphor for anything. I was born with twelve fingers.” Despite the clarification of the title from myth to fact, you can hear slight laughter from the audience. The kind of laughter suspended in disbelief. I, however, took her word for it because she said it. We should believe Black Women when they speak. I also took her word because I was born with eleven fingers.
While Lucille was granted these extra wonders from her maternal lineage, my paternal lineage granted me mine. Being born with extra fingers, known as polydactyly, usually runs in the family & is passed down genetically. Prior to hearing this poem, I had never given much thought to the small fleshy nub beside my left pinky. The extra finger was removed before it was seen in any of my baby pictures. I just knew that I had it, my dad did, & his father whom I never met had it. My mother told me of how they tied a string around my extra finger & like a plant deprived of water it wilted & waltzed to the ground. I was clipped & tied two times at birth: once for my umbilical cord & the second time for an extra finger. These are fleshy things that take up too much space & are not essential…to the hospital workers colonized by Western ways.
But I think the body lingers on these points of severance. The body always leaves behind remnants like a cut tree leaves a rooted stump. That stump still holds magic & with help from other roots, it has a support system. I was born with a whole village. These special case tree stumps are called living stumps. While I knew my extra finger was tied & deprived, Lucille’s words enabled me to see the magical remnants mimicked from nature. Lucielle’s poem pushed me to question that maybe my extra finger had not died but was just dormant. Or to use Lucille’s words…
Somebody was afraid we would learn to cast spells
& our wonders were cut off
but they didn’t understand
the powerful memories of ghosts
What strikes me the most in my initial meditation on Lucille’s poem is the tension in my language. As I re-read my last primary thoughts the words fighting & battling make my jaw heavy with grief. Yet, there it is again, there is a sense of belief in knowing that I have always been meant to inherent an abundant life. There is tension between feeling like the only way to truly rest in celebration is if I fought, & battled to my exertion. I think I was starting to realize that I can give into intuitive versus rigid structures & still receive & celebrate wins. I was starting to realize that there is no race & I longed for a sustainable pace to move through life. I was e x p a n d i n g by trying to remember & imagine a time when how I moved day to day nourished me. As I write this 1 year later, I am realizing that the pace of life I craved then is an embodied practice for me now.
Lucille’s shadowy hand touched my own left shadowy hand & bore witness forcing me to remember that “we take what we want now.” I was born with living stumps stuck down by institutional lightning bolts that everyone expected to die. Instead, they lived & I continue to live a charmed, magical, & protected life because I was born with hands to hold it all. This poem reminds & forces me to imagine the life I desire & know is already here. I never needed an extra wanded finger to cast spells. Trees hacked at the trunk can still live. The stump’s water flows slowly but it still f l o w s… sustainability. I will not be clipped out of my own life.