Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

I’m inspired by the feast of women I saw the other day.

Those black like me.

Those that begin from the womb and continue long past a day.

I know our imperfections are nothing,

that our light is everything,

that we gather loving those we would give our everything.

I have seen where women build liberating everything.

Seen where they put their hands in dirt and build from a place of love, a place of communion in union with those they call their own.

See when a woman loves, when she truly loves the magic in the eyes of those she loves,

those beautiful like the sunlight,

she would feed and feed their soul past the power of their name.

No doubt a feast of women will gather around other women, gather around those who will one day be women, just to remind them that they are loved, that they are truly loved in every sense of the word.

From the thickness of their hair follicles to the amazement of their brown tender eyes.

Love will run softly in eyes closed to edges of green tender cucumbers that restore all that make them strong.

This is a story about love, about loving those we love, those with eyes like us, the Iroko trees in us, that opens us all up beyond our selves.

This gathering, this feast of women who gather, is our birthright. Forever and ever, we will bristle and ache with delight, watch you grow and grow too still in delight.

We will arrange the wings that crown your back. Gently prod until you spread them out your way.

Then we would look on in delight, look on at the upward surge of our wildest hope.

The things which happen to women, happen to those yet to be women,

but being that we gather together,

gather like a feast of flowers that rise and open on their own,

is the reason why nothing is more important than this smile we now see.

Keep women who gather with eyes tiny like us.

It’s our birthright.

Thank you to my village of women in STL. You have no idea how grateful I am for the way you loved my better me. Love you all deep.