Conclusion: Conclusion De Ting about Blackness (A Meditation)

I re/turn to my island home for the first time since earning my doctoral degree from Midwestern State and starting my first tenure track job. Some tings haven’t changed. In the place we call the “droiyn” room— what would translate to a living room¹ —I sit among objects: a wooden sofa set I bought my mother the Christmas I worked my first job (or as my brother calls them “de Foodmasters chairs”); photos from my childhood, some in dilapidated aging frames, glass broken, Scotch tape visible and one dangling— turns out I rarely smiled in them— a graduation photo with