For the Kueens Who Catch Me

 For the Kueens Who Catch Me

They call me wild ...
offbeat, too loud, a whole weather system walking.
Thinking like a river that won’t be bargained with,
feeling like a mouthful of lightning,
loving like storms that don’t ask permission.

But you...
you never flinch when my thunder breaks the night.

You, older Black women stitched from different maps,
my walking, breathing coronation 
you who’ve walked through furnaces I've only walked against,
yet still you come, steady as Sunday,
with a love that don’t splinter, a patience that humbles my hurricane.

You hold me ...
in the curve of your arms like scripture,
pressing balm into the raw places.
Your voice: weathered and holy,
rough as the blues, tender as fresh cornbread,
rooted like oaks that split the sidewalk into witness.

You see me ...
not the headline the world prints,
but the soft, stubborn thing I’m becoming:
scarred, shining, stuttering into my own song.
And still ...you stay.

Aunties, Mamas, Godmothers, Elders 
Kueens wrapped in headscarves and halos,
hands that mend lineage, eyes that pierce my disguise
with one tired, loving look.

You don’t need to decode my kind of krazy.
You sit with it. You rock it like kin.
You pray on it, laugh at it, feed it when I forget to feed myself.
and when you say, “you gon’ be alright.”  and your “alright” is a promise, not a whisper.

You are why I keep showing up.
You are the mirror when I lose my face.
You taught me love is not only sweetness ...
it is the firm hand, the stern hush, the plate placed warm on the table.

You are the wisdom in my wild,
the cool on my fever,
the holy in my hustle.

This is for you ...
Black women seasoned like soyl food,
tended like grandmother gardens,
holding me down without binding,
lifting me without waiting for thanks.

You are the crown.
I wear you like sunlight across my ribs every time I rise.

Thank you...
for loving my tempest as if it were prayer,
for turning my chaos into sacrament.
Not madness. Not mistake.
Divine. Becoming. Mine.

Forever ...held in your royal hands. 👑

~ N'game'🦋