i died this morning and couldn’t wake up. tossing and turning, gasping for life, i opened my eyes and found myself breathless, walking with her on the moon. among the angels. i moved to speak and her fingers rose to my mouth to hush my lips. she drifted closer to me and whispered in my ear a secret chant. she told me to remember the melody, for it was a magic spell to cast down babylon.

i rode with her in a scraper with wings, to the side of heaven where the black folks dwell. tupac, thoreau and harriet are still fighting for equal rights in the society of heaven. when we parked the scrape the three of them were lining up the masses. we were commanded to take our place in the ranks. the formation of soldiers stretched on forever, snaking around corners, chaining perpetually through the blocks of the projects. she and i found our place in the line, 2 by 2, two single file lines, each woman and man standing at attention. she was by my side.

suddenly the ground began to shake and the earth began to part between us. each pair in the line was broken as the earth separated into two halves, east and west, and a rift formed between our revolution like a grand canyon. i dropped to my knees from a pain that split me from my rib. that’s when a fire bubbled over in my chest and the chant she whispered to me in the morning burst from my mouth, from all of our mouths. our song filled the air and the east met the west in a grand harmony. the grand harmony that snatched our voices into the sky transcended our flesh. we felt ourselves rising, high and mighty, away from the pain.  glancing down from the clouds, we watched our bodies still clinging to the quaking earth and realized that we had become our words. we drifted away from our bodies, abandoning one heaven for the next.

r.i.p. rebekah hinton