A Note I Almost Deleted
By Abena Sankofa Imhotep
This week, the kindest message ever landed in my inbox from a name most word-nerds would recognize immediately.
I stared at it longer than I care to admit.
My first instinct was not excitement. It was suspicion. Famous names can be borrowed, replicated, and automated. Screenshots circulate without context. Email signatures can be copied. Artificial intelligence can generate prose that sounds measured, even intimate.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has reported a steady rise in impersonation scams in recent years, many of them leveraging recognizable names to manufacture trust. The tools are no longer clumsy and obvious; they are polished.
So I hovered. Then I called a friend for advice. Should I delete the message? Should I respond?
He advised me to check the domain, and I did. I looked for verification points. I reread the language for urgency, for links, for the subtle cues of extraction. Digital literacy now requires more than knowing how to post. It requires knowing how to pause. Authentic correspondence rarely pressures. It does not rush you toward a link or a wire transfer. It invites. In this era, discernment is an extension of stewardship of your name and your work.
The note itself was relatively simple: no requests or pitches or solicitations. Just that they had spent time with my writing. It lingered with them, and invited reflection rather than reaction. They wanted to acknowledge that, from one writer to another.
I read it twice.
Writing is quiet work. So is building something that did not exist before. Most days are not glamorous. They are early mornings with drafts. They are late nights refining language until it sings. They are journals pages stacked on a desk. They are conversations that continue long after the room has emptied.
You release the work and rarely see where it lands.
So when a message appears saying, in essence, I sat with what you wrote and it stayed with me, it interrupts the pervasive silence.
The fact that the message does not ask for anything, coupled with the absence of vitriol feels almost radical. Just one mind reaching toward another.
Maybe it is real. I want to believe it is.
Maybe it is not.
But even the possibility felt like a small clearing in the noise, a glimmer that somewhere, someone is still reading slowly, thinking carefully, willing to reach across the distance and say, I see what you are building.
And whether the note leads anywhere or nowhere, I am choosing to honor what it represents. The work travels. It leaves the room. It finds its way into conversations I am not present for.
Sometimes, it comes back.
Abena Sankofa Imhotep is the founder of The Imhotep Report, Sankofa Literary & Empowerment Group, host of Black & Privileged in America Podcast, and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
Learn more at www.abenasankofa.com.
I always read your columns slowly, there is so much to think about, and I may not understand what you are building( being an old white guy! ) but I do see it . I love your line explaining the writing process, editing until the words sing. Keep writing, your perspective is needed.
I love this. And choose to believe the message is real. "You release the work and rarely see where it lands." Exactly. But sometimes, if we are aware of it or not, it lands right where it is supposed to.