Ownership of the Writing Women

It's as if people think having a voice shares the likeness of riding in on a chariot ready to save a neighboring village from some impending doom.  I wish it were, this voice, that is.  I wish it were intended for saving small children, young women and their absent minded husbands.  But this voice is nothing like that.  It does not bear intention or hope to breed a mass following.  It is just a voice, a tiny voice that was designated to free the soul within me.  A voice trying to rid me of any shame I felt or any excruciating curse I felt trapped under.  It wasn't built for you.  I built it ... well I didn't build it.  It came rushing out of me like tidal waves, a vomit of emotion, I was nearly bulimic with my own thoughts.  Either way, it wasn't for you although it makes me no less happy that you found something for yourself in it; that you found something to relate to, that you found a place to rest your aching limbs.  I am glad that this voice can be comfortable for you.  

But it is not always comfortable for me.  These thoughts conflict, these emotions clash at one another like titans trying to find love.  These thoughts that manifest themselves into this voice fight through hell to sound like a slice of heaven.  And I know that may be hard to grasp because by the time you're reading, it's like "YES, SHE'S SPEAKING MY LIFE" and you never stop to think for a moment, that I live that same life over and over every time I speak it into a place in which you exist, into a place where you are comforted.  And how lucky you are that you get to relive it in the privacy of your own home, probably in the nook and crannies of your bed with the lights out, long after every one else has fallen asleep. Beside you, the condensation builds on your cool wine glass as you sip through the painful memories, anguished questions and characters who were once lovers.  You can cry in the dark, recall his smile in the moonlight, laugh at yourself or hide your shame in the glimmering light of your screen.

How I envy your privacy.  How I envy that your voice has no desire to press itself into words for others to manipulate, enjoy, grieve over, analyze and appreciate.  I wish I was as quiet as you.  But I'm usually not and in the haste of my voice to purge itself, there will be things you do not understand, things you will not agree with, lands you will never feel under your feet and men you will love never knowing that they died in my arms once upon a time.

I think I'm getting used to the fact that no man loves me anymore. Not in the romantic sense, not in the count my eyelashes as I sleep sense, not in the 'as long as she's happy, I'm happy' sense.  In those intimate senses, no man loves me anymore.  They are the dust of my memories, too dull or too much of a liar to grasp how good I would potentially turn out to be.  They, unlike you, were afraid of this voice.  They were afraid of being a character.  They were afraid of being a story.  Too bad they weren't afraid of being sweaty nightmares or haunting images in my mirror late at night.  You're probably wondering how we got here or if that was a random tangent.  It wasn't.  It was proof that just like those men aren't mine, I am not yours.  They do not belong to me,  I do not belong to you.  I am a spirit, a winding breeze that can brush against your cheek or lift your hair.  One day you may love that about me and the next you may hate it.  But we, you and I do not belong to each other.  We share a space that we hope will be enjoyable and everlasting but there will be times that it is neither.  In those times, there will be a creeping desire to disrespect and lash out.  I urge you to dim your humanness when it gets to that point and return only when you are driving with grace on your dashboard.  

I love you but I do not belong to you but maybe, one day, if I was owned by you, I would behave better.

Mommy

Dear woman,

Your are built for this.  
The tiny body within you curves itself to fit comfortably against your spine.  
It waits for nourishment to fall from your lips to get a little plump beneath you. 

You worry mommy.  You worry that you're not strong enough.
But don't look away.  Don't howl at the moon.  Don't tear the walls down.

Focus.
Concentrate. Bring forth joy.
Your body was made for this.
The tingling, the nausea, the weakness, the cold, the warmth.
The labor is the earthquake.
You are opening up at your creases to bring heat to the surface.
Breathe.
Pray.
Focus.
God is on your side.
This is not punishment, this is paradise.
Sunshine is pouring itself through your legs.
Breathe mama. 
Your soul is working overtime tonight.
In. 
Out.
In. 
Out.
Cells collided enough to give you a miracle now bring it forth.
You cannot fail. 
You will not.
I promise you, your body is built for this.
You are the mother of the world, one child is simply one day's work.
Breath. 
Acquaint yourself with the truth that you are.
Delve into your own greatness.
Throw your hands down to the opening of your hips and grab hold of your earth.
Your bursting sunrise.
Your package.
Your home cooked meal.
Seize your work.
The pain will cease.
It will be just a memory, just another day's work.
Mommy, fear nothing. 
Fear no one.
Giving birth belongs to you as much as your name does.
Mommy.

Solange

I love Solange.  The young mother and artist seems so humble despite having the voice of an angel and a sister who has taken over the world.  Since following her career, it is quite apparent that her first job is being a mother and that beauty spills over into everything that the young talent is made of - her writing, her singing, her fashion, her hair, etc.  She is currently featured on Black Cab Confessions, where five friends came together with the idea to see their favorite performers by inviting them to record acoustically in the back of cabs in London.  Watch the beauty and control below.  

Women Making History

If you haven't noticed, you're standing in a pool of feminism here.  I'm always searching for something to empower and inspire our young queens and it seems I have struck gold.  


Ava DuVernay has become the first black director to ever win "Best Director" at the Sundance Film Festival. It's 2013 and the black race is still kicking down doors, moving mountains and peeling the sky back to find a new ceiling.  And Black women?  Burdened with two identities of inferiority, we are striving.  We are working.  We are present in a different capacity than our mothers and sisters before us, but we're here.  The soft spot I have for women is not really soft at all.  It is a solid reassurance that there is still work to be done.  There are still souls to save and tears to wipe away.  


This short film starring Gabrielle Union,  Alfre Woodard, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Adepero Oduye and Goapele is a direct representation of female friendship.  It is the evidence of evolution of a woman experiencing a breakup, the distress, the healing and unconditional love by her friends.  Sometimes splitting up with a man is really splitting up your soul into dividends you can't even piece together in peace.   God, it hurts sometimes.  And sometimes it hurts all the time.  

Your friends, your sisters, the angels God sent to watch over you - it is their golden duty to bring you back to life.  What an honor to be blessed by them.  This film, The Door, shows me how nurturing our hands are, how sometimes her heart has to beat for the both of you.  And we will resist, we will fight because we are hurting inside but she does not retreat.  She is not afraid of your ugly.  She will not surrender you to a devil that doesn't love you anymore.  She is your friend, your sister, your queen.  And as much as we share ourselves with the men in our lives, we belong to a feminine circle, a pool of womanhood. We belong to an honor society in which we have to repair one another.  We must feed each other, clothe each other, and drag sunshine into each other's windows.


I remember when this was me.  I remember not wanting to eat, my hair falling out when him and I fell out.  I mean, I was a wreck over and over again.  The sun couldn't even melt the frozen tears on my eyelids.  It was my sisters who brought me back, who resurrected me, who beat my chest in until my heart mimicked life again.  They pulled him out of me like a tape worm sucking the nutrients I tried to ingest.  My sisters brought me back and I'm  so unapologetically thrilled that this film was made for us and by us.  


I share with you the display of our kind womanhood.  Enjoy and then share.  

P.S.  The fashion is nothing short of amazing.  Below the two videos are some stills I captured attached to the poem I heard in my head.

Sometimes I lay still, hoping if I'm still enough, the rest of the world won't notice that I'm even here anymore

And then she comes over with her attitude and her healing  

Her resilience  

I wish I could be as strong as she is

But I'm not

I'm nowhere close

It hurts to even stand up

She invites the sunshine in

The darkness is still here though

In the corners, in the crevices of my couch

In the creases of my skin

When she touches the ice that is my flesh, her warmth almost makes me cringe

Her pulse is the only music I've heard in days and my ears are just not used to the sound of life anymore

Let me sit here for a moment longer

My bed has become a casket

The most comfortable part of death is the linen

She wants me to put clothes on

Doesn't matter what I wear

They will see the scars

They will see what he did to me

They will see me

I will see me 

And I'm sure I won't like what I see

As she slides the plate closer to me, I'm reminded of the dinners he made

The way he diced the tomatoes and washed the lettuce

This plate is just a memory of all the pain I've digested

Too full of absolutely nothing to try

I am defeated by our failure

Skeptical toward my own healing

Back in my robe and back into the confines where broken hearts hide away

I'm not ready to dance Marie, there's no music here

There's no melody 

The silence is deafening and I just want to sleep until a tune is beautiful and honest enough to wake me

She holds my hands and pulls my body into motion

I move my hips to her happiness

I borrow her joy,  I borrow the brown of her hands

I borrow her glow

And a smile creeps out of me

From a little tiny place within me, the smile comes out to play

And I sway to the curve of that smile until I'm too tired to remember I'm in pain

But here Evelyn comes knocking with two tickets to an emotional paradise

I can't enjoy anything, it hurts too much

I just tried walking and dancing, my limbs are still on fire

Leave me here

I guess I have no say in your attempts to heal me

The dress looks nice

In awe of her silhouette

She is so put together

You can't see her stitches

You can't see her scars

I know she has them, I have them

They are there

I am not making them up

Am I just a bag of bones?

Is my silhouette anywhere near as beautiful as it once was?

She sings

And heaven crawls out of her voice

Her happiness makes me remember mine

With my short white veil, my open arms and a band to promise to love till death do us part

Indeed

Death has parted us

It is real

And she kisses my sadness away

I kiss her back in gratitude

And finally return home

To arms that have sometimes been too critical but always open 

Please Mom, just help me

Just tell me it will be okay like you did when I had a stomachache in the first grade

She watches me arrive, her scent for me still strong

She can smell my weakness

She can smell her blood in my veins

Clasped in her wings, it is safe here

It is warm here, her eyes beaming at my experience

Her heart thrilled that she can be here to receive me

Like the day she first held me, she gazes at me as if it were that day again

Two things are true, I am her baby and tea cures everything

I inhale the steam and I am amazed that a tiny cup can warm my entire body

Hold me Mom

Again, I am amazed

How two arms can heal my entire body.

Practice makes perfect

I roll the hips back and forth

The bones creaking from my last affair

The dust of my ribs sprinkling onto this new flesh

I want to love him in a rhythm that even God's choir stands in awe of 

I grew tired of vibrating against his chest

Lay in angst and sweat wondering if this would ever feel normal

He rubbed my cheek with his satisfaction 

He wanted me and I wanted to want him back

But I was struggling trying to fit into him like a glove I haven't worn all winter

His breath stuck to my skin and I tried to store it to memory

He wanted this to work 

But for me, it was work

Sighs

Showers

Sex

Caffeine

Maybe I could get used to loving him 

Maybe I could get used to the drumming in my soul

Maybe I could sing into his microphone and finally feel comfortable on the stage of our potential love

Every night I go to sleep trying

Then I deny it in the morning, over pancakes and regretful text messages

Maybe it's a mistake 

Or maybe it takes practice

He's cute enough to practice on so I roll the hips back and forth

I put practice back into my vocabulary

And I learn to love him 

I learn to really love him more than myself

And eventually when I see my ex, I thank him for being the practice that made perfect.

Reminiscing

Um.  True story.

Everybody has luggage...but what is luggage?

Yikes.  I'm back and totally cheating on my novel.  Father forgive me for I have sinned but I want to share something with y'all, that I just recently worked out in my head during a late night conversation with someone.  I'm practicing celibacy (practicing meaning Jesus don't fail me now) of the mind, body and spirit meaning I'm completely empty of anyone else.  I can't even entertain my past anymore which obviously sucks sometimes because I innocently miss them from time to time.  But it's like trying to stay on a diet and baking brownies every night.  It's not going to work.  The temptation is too real.  You remember everything, you smell the goodness and you dive into the batter of a man you cannot digest.  And then when you eat the whole pan because we all know you'll eat the whole pan, there's no stopping, you sit on your bed stuffed, sick with the overload of calories you're no longer used to.  Eventually, you're so uncomfortable that you have to purge yourself and you find yourself hovering over a porcelain god praying for repentance, promising that if the pain ceased enough, you will never do it again.

Girl.  I know.  I ain't write a book about it yet, but I am because that's how real it gets.  Anyway, I decided that I had to come clean with myself.  The proposals, the apologies, the making of amends, those were all beautiful things and I thank the men that changed me, that carved me into a thicker woman, a stronger woman, a wounded woman.  I love them all, still very much but more than any love I show gratitude.  A true sign of my gratitude is to actually put into practice the lessons they taught me.  They taught me to move on by MOVING THE F.CK ON.  So, I'm moving the absolute f.ck on.  Now, it's scary.  Don't get me wrong.  I want to crawl back into familiar arms so many times.  Sometimes it's a song or a certain food that reminds me of times I'm not too sure I don't want to go back to BUT there's a reason it didn't work and my job is not to figure that out but to appreciate it.  So back to my celibacy.  There's a difference between luggage and bullsh.t  I stopped entertaining empty relationships to give a real one a chance.  My daughter is luggage, my skepticism is luggage.  But carrying a few grown ass men around, that's BULLSH.T.  It is unfair and selfish of me to expect a man to hold me down while I'm clearly busy holding other men down.  I'm over being selfish. I'm over being a party of four and still going to bed alone.  NO.  I'm one woman, one heart, one body and one soul and that's all I should be carrying.  

At this point in my life, if a man approaches me and I think there's something there, I'm not making him compete.  My dedication, monogamy and exclusivity from day one is the truest example of how serious I am and how I deserve the same in return.  There's no competition here.  I'm yours from day one.  Maybe it will work, maybe it won't but at least from the second he enters my life, he knows that I'm trying with all I have.  And I think when a man feels like he's number one, he does a better job of acting like it.  When you present yourself as a queen, you lay out the platform for him to be a KING and what man doesn't want to run the castle?  In addition to that, when talking to several people at a time, it can get so messy, so fast, most times unintentionally.  Sometimes I interact with people thinking it's nothing, just a few text messages, just a few outings - they can't possibly like me from that, they don't know me.  But some people don't need much.  Some people WILL like you, some people will even LOVE you and you're arrogant to think your casual interaction is casual to them too.  Everyone is different.  Every god requires different things.  Every sinner has a different confession.  Don't play with people and then wonder why you've been toyed with.  Free yourself by freeing others.  Love on purpose.  Love with purpose.  Grow up and make a decision.  Decide from the moment that your king appears to you that you're ready or NOT ready to build an empire and whatever your decision is, make it clear to yourself and to him.  Don't let a man build a home inside of you and you have no intention of staying there.  Don't let a man fall in love with you because you're lonely and not worthy.  

And I promise you, it starts to feel good.  It feels really good when you know you're behaving in a way to reap what you truly deserve.  Yep, I deserve to live good because I budgeted my emotions, my sex and all of my goodness until I had enough saved up to enjoy another worthy human being.

Ladies, I love y'all.  Men, I love y'all too.  But let's face it, when you finally become a trustworthy person, you become more open to trusting others.  It is when we do our own dirt that we become skeptics of everyone around us.  I used to be terrified of my karma and I should have been, but now... day by day, I invite her into me.  Because my goodness will return itself tenfold in the form of a king ready for the type of queen I have finally become.

Love.