I’ve been thinking about what it means to exist as a Black woman. Simply put, we are alchemists by force and choice. We turn what we have into what we need and cuss along the way if we must. I’d still choose to be a Black woman in every lifetime.
Hidden in the musical sway of our hips are unwanted advances we dare not share.
Unheard cries dangle ever so gently behind contagious laughs.
Thoughts shrouded in doubt, and questions about our self-worth are tucked away in the crisscross pattern of box braids or concealed in the cylindrical pattern of locs. For it is unbecoming to be unsure. We must never be unsure…which is quite ironic considering the world has presented us with nothing but uncertainty. Our resentment can be found wrapped tightly, bobby pinned, and smoothed out to perfection.
Black women are indeed magic because Black women are the source. But, at what risk? Is there a price to the constant transmutation? What happens when our self-sufficiency becomes a crutch we no longer need, but can’t relinquish?
I struggle with the obsession over our resilience because it’s become expected of us to make sweet wine from sour grapes. Our magic has been commodified and warped into a weapon of dehumanization against us.
There is magic in the falling apart, too, though. We find our truest selves in the unraveling, the washing…the detangling. There, in the bare fields of who we are, is where we discover how to become our own refuge.
Still, we ask ourselves
Why does joy hide in the darkest places?
Why must we damn near drown in murky waters to find it?
Why must we exhume our joy from graves we didn’t dig?
Why does it seem to bury itself under regret, pain, and bad memories?
I’m starting to reject the notion that one must suffer to understand happiness. Happiness is our birthright.
May the road back to ourselves remind us that we are more than a gathering place for pain.
Stay Wild,
K.P.