My love!
My darling! My love! My friend!
I see you!!
I see you standing
bereft and feeling confused.
I see you pained and
know your anger
as one more person expects more of you
than they do of themselves.
The world is not upside down.
There’s just more of us
owning a reality
openly denied:
a litany of survival
Audre Lorde warrior woman poet wrote
we were never meant to survive.
As she lay her words upon the page
did she struggle like we?
Of course she did!
She too was mortal.
Remember Audre warrior woman poet
who spoke our longings
textualized our scars
languaged wounds we
did not know we had until
Nurse D’vorah licked the wounds
clean of pus
and
Judge D’vorah applied medicine songs
and
Kohenet Mir’yam sutured them with loving laughter.
Our Mothers returned us to the world with
we are expected to love ourselves
tattooed backwards on our foreheads
so that whenever we catch sight of
ourselves
in a mirror we would quickly
lean in and kindly touch our reflection.
Owning our worthiness
We shout:
Thank you!
Great Love!
For loving me!
Thank you!
Great Love!
For loving me!
Thank you!
Great Love!
For loving me!
© Copyright Sabrina Sojourner 2022
