The woman lives
When the shadow of the moon
Falls ebony on the earth
And the trees of her forest
Are like burnt matchsticks
on scorched field
She lingers then -
like smoke in the dark,
Until we meet
In the appointed place,
Two black holes in the abyss of the cosmos and
She opens
A nightmare mouth,
words slithering forth
-the tip of the tongue the teeth and the lips-
dripping from her chin
in jet black ink
"Are you ready?" she screeches
A crow
A banshee in the graveyard
I cannot speak, cannot see anything but the ink that rolls like a wave from her lips
Dark and terrible
A blood moon
"I See you" she calls with open arms
A lover's embrace
An eternal escape
But the shadow is receding
Drawing you to the heart of the forest
And she reaches for you once more
Your hand twitches
The path is tangled
Brambles whip and thorns claw
and you both understand
Time is up
"Never again." She croaks splayed against a treetrunk "Never again"
The woman fades with the last of the shadow
She cannot return
And you are alone again
Hands shaking in the sun
Lips covered in ink

Forgive yourself
Perfect was never a word suited for you
Love yourself
Everything comes back to this
Love your sister
She has been picked apart, degraded, and has an internal war eating her from the inside out
Love your brother
He has a time stamp of deliverance to a life of incarceration, bullets released from an absence of sense, lack of educated, blind ambitious followers.
Raise your head
You are a Goddess created
with disarming beauty in mind.
Continue to place one foot in front of the other
You are meant and strongly designed for forward movement.
Take no steps back, do not bow down your head, do not close your mouth
In fear that judgment will fall
It will, but you must speak anyways.
Your voice is imperative
to the growth of lost girls who are unsure what real women are made of.
Your voice is imperative to the peaking of the minds of men unsure what to look for in a Queen, show him.
Your voice is imperative to the readjustment of the image of
Black Women with large voices
Black Women with high diction
Black Women with love language
Black Women with literary genius
Black Women filled with nothing less than the peace & love God has manifested within us.
Black Women
Black Women
Black Women
Who love Black men like double chocolate moist bliss
Who love White men like dark roast coffee filled with cream
Who love Latino men like Butterscotch candy dipped in chocolate
The list goes on
Black Women who love like we are bound to implode if we don't give the universe what it is that we need back.
Black Women
Your Mother
Black Women
Your Sister
Black Women
Your Friend
Black Women
Your Lover
Black Woman
Love Her.

I fundamentally
believe
that the best way
you can show
someone
you care about them
is to cook for them.

To take something
and spend your
time
energy
and love
to convert it to a dish
that quite literally
sustains the
existence
of another being
is
to me
the epitome of love.

Death is the absence
of Life
and Food sustains Life
so by feeding those around you,
you indirectly say,
"I want you to live."

Pretty poppies
And burnt earth for horizons
Crackling savage against the cool blue
That burns you without and tightens within
Endless green and poppies

I wish I spoke like you,
In red earth, pebbles spilling from my grin
Able to lie as much as gabble
And taste the impatient air
The scent of expectant poppies

Hurriedly, I'd rush back there
And feel the emptiness apart from me again,
That kind of emptiness that lends itself to
An adventure in you
And blushes
Like poppies blush
In turbulent valleys of burnt dirt