Greetings, Lakshmi,
gold at the threshold,
lotus-woman laughing softly
at every door that once mistook me for empty.
Greeting, Ezili,
perfumed grief, pink satin, blade beneath the lace,
The beautiful audacity of wanting more
And knowing more was always the minimum.
Greetings, Oshun,
honey-tongued river,
sweetness with a spine,
the one who teaches that pleasure
is not frivolous,
It is evidence.
Greetings, Ishtar,
star-crowned and inconvenient,
too radiant for small rooms,
too honest for polite ruin.
Greetings, Sekhmet,
lioness of the holy temper,
fire with an impeccable résumé,
the part of me that no longer apologizes
for arriving with teeth.
Greetings, Hathor,
music in the hips,
mirror in the hand,
Joy that survived the
Inquisition of other people’s opinions.
Greetings, Ix Chel,
moon-mother, medicine woman,
keeper of waters, wounds, and woven things,
You who know that creation
is often a clandestine act
performed in the dark
before anyone has the decency
to call it genius.
Greetings, all the goddesses I honor.
The named, the unnamed,
the ones hidden in clay, salt, silk,
sweat, smoke, scripture, kitchen steam,
bathwater, birth blood, funeral songs,
and the peculiar silence
before a woman decides
She has had enough.
I know you.
I know you in the ample curve of my refusal.
I know you in the meticulous way I rise.
I know you in my laugh,
which has become a small, legal rebellion.
I know you in my discernment,
now so sharp it can slice a promise
from a performance.
I know you in the opulent hush
of my own becoming,
in the sacred arithmetic of survival,
How can a woman be bereft on Monday
and still choose earrings by Wednesday.
That, beloveds, is not confusion.
That is the range.
I am you.
You are me.
Not in theory.
Not as some decorative axiom
embroidered on a pillow
by someone who has never had to resurrect herself
between rent, grief, and graduate school,
and the audacity of men.
I mean it in the body.
In the abdomen that remembers.
In the throat that opens.
In the hips that kept the archive.
In the hands that made a life
out of fragments of other people
were too careless to bless.
To be a woman
is to carry a private cathedral
and a public weather system.
It is to be fecund with ideas,
lucid in the aftermath,
radiant without permission,
incandescent when necessary,
and occasionally, mercifully,
unavailable.
It is to be tender
without becoming a corridor
for everyone else’s chaos.
It is to be magnanimous, yes,
but not naïve.
Benevolent, yes,
but not a buffet.
It is known that beauty
is not always soft.
Sometimes beauty is a boundary
spoken in a calm voice
with lip gloss on.
Sometimes magic
Is the invoice paid,
The application was submitted,
the bed made,
the tea steeped,
the name protected,
the body listened to,
The dream written down
before doubt can vandalize it.
Greetings, Lakshmi.
Greetings, Ezili.
Greetings, Oshun.
Greetings, Ishtar.
Greetings, Sekhmet.
Greetings, Hathor.
Greetings, Ix Chel.
Greetings, ancient mothers of the possible.
Come in, then.
Sit with me.
The altar is clean.
The candle is lit.
The room smells like water, cinnamon,
and a woman who finally believes herself.
I have nothing left to prove
to those who require a miracle
and still complain about the lighting.
I have been the wound,
the witness,
the river,
the blade,
the balm,
the bride of my own becoming.
I have been underestimated
with such consistency
that I began to consider it
a form of unpaid prophecy.
And look at me now.
Still here.
Still luminous.
Still deliberating.
Still carrying galaxies
in a handbag
with receipts, lipstick, keys,
and one very necessary plan.
This is the beauty of being a woman:
We are never only one thing.
We are invocation and answer.
Mercy and mandate.
Silk and thunder.
Ancestral and immediate.
Soft enough to bless the room,
sovereign enough to leave it.
We carry magic
because we are the passage.
We carry memory
because we are the archive.
We carry fire
because someone had to.
And when I say hello to the goddesses,
I am not calling them down
as though they are far away.
I am greeting the mirror.
I am opening the door.
I am saying,
yes, I recognize you.
Come closer.
We have work to do.
We have honey to taste.
We have empires to revise.
We have daughters to free.
We have ourselves to adore
without footnotes.
Greetings, by many names.
I am here.
And this time,
I am not whispering—-
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