“Woven”
After Audre Lorde

I tell stories with the tongue of the women who came before me:
on porches, sitting in the night, hands flying.

The smell of grease brings me back to hot combs sizzlin’,
holding down my ear, tender head and tears.

Double dutchin between dreams. Grown girl at seventeen. Mother
matriarchs, adorned in gold, hanging from head to toe.

Sundays best my cousin and I dance to the prayers
they stitched together like scarfs or little black girls with big dreams.

They sing “Praise the Lord” with conviction and fans heavy in their hands.
Receiving their blessing, we bow our heads and fly away

to real life, to initiation, where strong is the only word left to describe
a growing girl with her world on her shoulders.

No expectations, no pressure. Only a curiosity towards limits. Where does the sky end? And if
fear makes us fall, could we still live with hope to be tall?

There will be mending hearts and a lineage of remedies. A blanket made bed somewhere you
know where you can always rest your head.

Let your silence fall so we can hold your weight in our arms
And tell you what we’ve always known:

The world is not ours to claim– ours to conquer or control. So we create our own.
And we do it again, and again. And again.