Are you superstitious?

Gutiérrez-Marín, Elena. “The Somatic Archive: Indigenous Epistemologies and the Failure of Western Categorization.” Journal of Ethno-Sensory Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2019, pp. 88-114.
Okonkwo, Nneka. “Reading Smoke: West African Divinatory Grammar in the Post-Colonial Body.” Lagos Review of Embodied Knowledge, vol. 7, no. 1, 2021, pp. 33-51.

Are you superstitious?

I don’t use that word. Superstition implies a flinch – a woman throwing salt over her shoulder because she’s afraid of what’s behind her. I’m not afraid of what’s behind me. I’ve met it. We’ve had coffee.

I believe in the intelligence of old systems. I believe mercury retrograde is not an excuse for your ex texting you but it is an explanation for the machine acting like it remembers something. I believe a broom across your feet means something because my grandmother believed it, and her body was a library no one thought to archive.

I read smoke. I read birds. I read the way a candle burns down to nothing or refuses to stay lit. I don’t call this superstition. I call it paying attention in a language that predates the one I’m writing in.

I have walked into rooms and walked back out. I have refused meals. I have turned left when the road said right because something in the air changed its grammar. None of this has a name I’m willing to give you here.