not. by Audre Lorde

This morning I have been reading from "The Black Unicorn" by Audre Lorde...really struck this morning by how several of the poems in that collection end with a powerful statement of what is NOT

the black unicorn is not
free.

I am
woman
and not white.

I am
the sun and moon and forever hungry
the sharpened edge
where day and night shall meet
and not be
one.

I have died too many deaths
that were not mine.

for the embattled
there is no place
that cannot be
home
nor is.

what you know
can hurt
but what you do
not know
can kill.

Once
freed from constancy
this house
will not stand
forever.

May I owe nothing
that I cannot repay.

and of course...

we were never meant to survive.

So this morning I am thinking about the clarity of negativity. Of expressing what is not. Or what is, in its absence necessary to make present as a critical clarity, shaping what is.