Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem All the Stones That Built Me by Somto Ihezue, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about a time you thought: How long have you died here? OR Write about the things that built you.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday June 17th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

All the Stones That Built Me by Somto Ihezue

In this house are things:
a boy, a lantern,
dead mice, silverware,
running water, screams.

There is filth in this house,
and there is a mop,
and the filth is mop,
and the mop is filth.
And there is me: mop and filth.

This house is a broken Louvre.
In it, I do not have a face,
only a coin ... on the floor ... 
In its shimmer—ghosts pushing me off the roof,
daring me to fly.

And the bedroom?
We sleep when we are dead.
The kitchen?
In this house, we break not bread but stones and promises.
How long have you died here?

My mother lived in this house when I lived in her.
She was many a thing:
a girl, a dark room, scurrying mice,
rust, dripping water, silence,
and at the end, the last spoonful of canned beans.
They collect, dancing on the ceiling, the memories.
They cry, they howl,
they put a bounty out on me.

How do I quell the place that built me?
Set fire to all your bones.

There is no dreaming in this house.
I want to dream that I was old.

Source: Poetry (April 2022)