For the Kueens Who Keep Me

 For the Kueens Who Keep 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 splits the night.

You, older Black women stitched from different maps,
my walking, breathing coronation.
You who’ve walked through furnaces I’ve only felt the heat from,
and 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 my bruised becoming.
Your voice...weathered and holy,
rough as the blues,
tender as fresh cornbread,
rooted like oak trees cracking concrete into testimony.

You see me.
Not the headline the world prints,
but the trembling, stubborn truth I’m trying to grow into 
scarred, shining, still stuttering into my own song.
And still... you stay.

Aunties, Mamas, Godmothers, Elders.
Queens wrapped in headscarves like halos,
hands that mend lineage,
eyes that pierce through my disguise
with one tired, all-knowing look.

You don’t need to decode my kind of krazy.
You sit with it.
You rock it like kin.
You pray on it.
You laugh at it.
You feed it when I forget to feed myself.
And when you say,
“Gurl, you gon’ be alright,”
your alright ain’t a whisper 
it’s a covenant.
A promise.
A prophecy.

You are why I keep showing up.
You are the mirror when I lose my face.
You taught me that love ain’t always soft....
sometimes it’s a firm hand,
a stern hush,
a plate placed warm on the table
before I even knew I was hungry.

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 soul food,
tended like grandmother gardens,
holding me down without binding,
lifting me without asking for thanks.

You Are The Crown.

And 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 power 

I truly am because we are 

Asé  👑

~ N'game'🦋