We will not lose
“We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” - Ella Baker
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I dare you to break us open
and watch our hardened blood spill out
into the earth and the seas
and into your nostrils,
and down your throat
until you choke
and can no longer ignore us
but taste us
until we can become soft again
and then your eyes
will open
entranced as we emerge
steps emboldened
bodies broken
hearts stronger than life
we are unshielded,
barefaced
no longer able to be open
except
to those we hold as close
as our secrets
we don't wait for miracles anymore,
we become them
a reconstituted form of nature’s
most enigmatic creation
malleable and rigid,
sensitive and stoic,
hypervisible and concealed
she is
more than her womb
and her wounds
who is she
one of the young girls
who still read and run
and play
while hungry
or one of the mothers who rise
at dawn
after burying their children
in yesterday’s moonlight
or maybe the aunt and sister who
gathered the orphans left behind
as families were destroyed
or is she the woman
they try to erase
but still has the audacity
to fight and
stay alive
you hate that
you cannot see into us
so you pore over us
until you are forced to ask
how who you be?
and we
respond with the silence
of our grandmothers
and their grandmothers,
who you walked by
rendered nameless
assumed to be without story
or value
but did not grieve
but grew generations
of legends
within our own spaces
villages of visionaries
intricate connections made
of only those who pour in
so we could pour out beauty
and wisdom
and fire
and magic
and genius
and love
until there was nothing greater
than what we see
and what we move
and what we cherish
and what we groove to,
swaying side to side,
sister, we would say
I love you,
and it's the first time
I've known you.
Here we stand,
beckoning to each other
to come home
so we can tread as one
in the rivers of our tears
of joy
and sadness
in lockstep
“Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.”
- Alice Walker
Mother God
how you fashioned
these minds
these curves
our words
to amaze
even in our outrage
as we raise
ourselves on
each other's backs
knowing we can never leave or lift
without her hand in mine
You, the mothers
of enchantment
we look to you
then we look up
then side and side
and smirk
with a sly side-eye
knowing we can be
their worst nightmare
or their most sacred dream
they must choose
but under no circumstances
will we lose
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Beautiful 💕
fuck yeah