Adiyah Ma’at Obolu

My name is Adiyah Obolu, and I am a high school junior in the Sacramento area. Poetry has become an outlet for me to express myself and process the atrocities of the world. Since I was a toddler, I have been attending poetry slams and, even then, I was astonished by how much I could learn about recollection and history from a form of art. As I got older, I began to create my own poetry to honor my story and the future I want to create for the world. Now, I am a poet in Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS), performing on national stages to engage, inspire, and educate my listeners.

My poem, “Forest Fire,” is inspired by the astonishing Sonia Sanchez poem, “Catch the Fire,” featured in the “Opening” of this book. In the poem, Sanchez calls on us to look toward the fire of Blackness. Blackness that is resilient and powerful, revolutionary and beautiful, passionate and purposeful. Sanchez pushes us to find the fire that is already kindled inside us to make change and reach our full potential. Spread the fire through community, through our schools, through love—and once we set the fire in ourselves, it has the inherent potential to spread across generations. Even with the day-to-day hardships of being Black, Sanchez reminds us that we have a fire that can never be extinguished: no matter how small the flame is, our fire is always being kindled.

In my poem, I try to find that fire inside myself. I wrote it at a time when I felt a loss of hope for the world. After witnessing the mass uprisings of 2020, I was eager to see a country geared more toward racial justice. But as the protests and news coverage began to die down, I felt a loss of momentum. How could so much happen in a couple of months, and all there is to show is a Black Lives Matter painting at the White House? Or corporations using Black lives to make sales even when they are exploiting Black workers in the process? What hope was there when the only thing this country had to give us was performative activism?

With these feelings looming, some of the only ways I can cope is to write poetry. So I wrote. I honored my fire as I sought to kindle it a little more. I pondered where my drive to make change was, where my endless dreams of revolution were. I sought to reconnect with my fire and allow it to spread, faster than ever known.

My poem questions the status quo and what true justice looks like. But, let us never forget our morals when using this powerful fire. Let us not get so lost in a task or a project that we forget what we are doing it for. Let us use this fire to create roots and branch out trees but not burn the forest down. This fire comes with the inherent responsibility to spread and nurture it, but not burn our history away or lose the knowledge of our ancestors. Our fire spreads light, our fire decolonizes our minds, our fire dreams drastically and unapologetically.

In addition to writing poetry, I also seek to imagine the future and to make it. I started my own podcast, Our Justice Journey, which is a series of conversations with social justice warriors giving advice to youth on how to make change. I worked cooperatively with my school’s Black Student Union to create a district-wide Student Bill of Rights that is currently in process before it is finally implemented as policy in our district. Throughout all this, I have learned what justice work needs, and what it takes is fire. The fire to keep going, the fire that lights the way, the fire that spreads and inspires.

I often return to this poem when I feel I have lost my momentum to create change, not only to learn about the world but also to create and imagine sustainable solutions for change. I use my fire to change policy, to inspire, to create projects that push my community to our full potential. Being Black in Sacramento is simultaneously beautiful and painful. The beauty of Blackness that can surround you in certain areas is comforting and feels like home. But knowing that those very spaces are targets is traumatic. When Stephon Clark was killed in his grandmother’s backyard, you realize that you are not safe even in your home. Even with SacPD being run by a Black man and one of the officers who killed Clark being a Black policeman. When white supremacists could come to your school, as they did to mine in September 2021, and target the Black Student Union with an issue that has nothing to do with them, you realize you are not safe even in your school. But even with these hardships, the beauty of Blackness is incomparable.

I am inspired by all the powerful Black solutionaries here in Sacramento. I think about the Black youth who show up eagerly when I intern with Foreign Native to host youth pop-up shops and learn entrepreneurship skills. Or my peers whom I work with in a nonprofit called Youth Voices Sacramento, which seeks to put youth first. My amazing co-hosts on the podcast Black vs. the Board of Education who call out the education system and embody the change we need to see in our districts. And my peers whom I work with on College to Career Ready (CCR) to create equitable schooling and better opportunities for Black youth across the region. Blackness is beautiful, and it is also resilient. Hope continues to multiply, even with new barriers. Black youth inspire me to make change; I know our future will be filled with even more fire.

“Catch the Fire” and “Forest Fire” push us to honor the fire of Blackness, of justice, of global love. Together we have the capability to drastically improve the world. As SAYS director and poet Patrice Hill teaches us, “Every Black child deserves to have a legacy.” Every Black child is our ancestors’ living, breathing legacy. And as Ta-Nehsi Coates echoes, “They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people.” We are the remembrance. We are the recollection. We are the becoming of the legacy of an unstoppable fire that has been kindled since the beginning of time. We are forest fire.

“Forest Fire”

Where is my fire?

I want it to catch and then inspire

Where is my fire?

Lost hope but with that how do we cope

Where is my fire?

Is it hiding inside me and I have yet to ignite it?

Where is my fire?

Cause it was just us against the world

Most haven’t even touched their motherlands soil

I often toil with the world

With our progression and oppression

I toil if integration was really ever the way

How do I right now make change?

And emancipate myself from mental slavery

But for some it’s all they’ve ever known

As we cast a vote for hope

But how do I imagine horizons worth climbing for?

Or money worth buyin for?

Do we really think the revolution is worth dyin for?

I’m sick of these denying sources

white supremacist courses

On some don’t bring up the corpses

America is living on borrowed time

Never indicted for their crimes

As we climb the very tree they hung Black folks off of

And then gaslight the Black communities’ intergenerational trauma

Would they know what to do?

Martin, Malcom, would they know how to fight for truth?

Selassie, Assata, would they know how to uplift the youth?

But it’s our turn to find a new tree and tend the soil

Branch off roots and inspire

Keep our eye on the goal, global love is what we seek to acquire

We ain’t the fire next time, we the fire right now

But can we use it for justice and not burn the whole forest down

—Adiyah Obolu