A Spell for Excision 

After Akwaeke Emezi 

Camille Bacon

Pray for the courage to cut. Pull the blade out from between your teeth, sharpen it against the weight of impending loss until it reflects your image, incandescent again. Watch it glisten. Open your eyes — wide, feral, searing. Remind them who you are. 

Now excise. Explain nothing. No fear or fire left in you. When you leave: scent-clouds of regret, their mind skipping. Heavy hearts hang low in a forever sky.  Don’t think — Just/excise. 

I should mention: when you pray for courage, pray for blood. They will fight back and you must be ready. Arm yourself with the enduring truth that you are already immune to your own incisions. Those who hold a god and neglect it in the same breath have pure irreverence where their hearts should be. Why shouldn’t they meet your wrath? Compassion will visit tomorrow. For now — Just/excise. 

You must cut at all costs. Never be the one to quiver. Come out at all costs. 

Remember that your body always knew this is how it would end. 

Remember Toni’s incantation that “it is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.” 

Remember that gods burn everything that interrupts the work to the ground.

 
Camille Bacon is a Chicago-based writer who is cultivating a "sweet Black writing life" as informed by the words of poet Nikky Finney. Her work draws from the rich tradition of Black feminist thinkers before her & aims to pour back into that legacy. She is a recent graduate of Smith College, where she was named the inaugural Cromwell Fellow for Black Studies.

*Portrait by Felton Kizer