I enter July
With my hips fluent in optimism,
My shoulders refuse the obsolete grief
that once tried to rent a room in my body
without paying a deposit.
No, beloved.
The lease is up.
I have become too discerning
to mistake chaos for chemistry,
too luminous
to negotiate with dim rooms,
too well-seasoned
to call every interruption a prophecy.
July arrives in a linen dress,
sun-drunk and unapologetic,
with citrus on her tongue
and receipts in her purse.
She says,
Girl, you survived the austerity of other people’s imagination.
Now act accordingly.
So I do.
I wake with a jubilant spirit,
not naïve,
not saccharine,
not performing delight
for the comfort of those
who still believe suffering is the only evidence of depth.
My joy is not frivolous.
It is archival.
It has documents.
It has witnesses.
It has endured enough inclement weather
to know when the sky is finally speaking in gold.
I am entering July
quintessentially dynamic,
vibrantly wealthy
in mind, body, soul, and spirit.
Wealthy in the way my breath returns to me
after every season that tried to confiscate it.
Wealthy in the way my laughter sits at the table
before anyone thinks to ask permission.
Wealthy in discernment,
in appetite,
in sacred audacity,
in the opulent refusal
to shrink for mediocre weather.
Let the month be magnanimous.
Let the doors be unequivocal.
Let the blessings arrive
with good lighting, direct deposit,
and no confusing footnotes.
I have no interest
in being palatable to smallness.
I am not here
to be a minor character
in someone else’s unresolved chapter.
I am the author,
the altar,
the annotation,
and the woman
who finally stopped apologizing
for the abundance of her own becoming.
There is a certain kind of woman
who enters a room
and the room remembers
It was built to hold radiance.
I am becoming that woman
in public.
Not with bravado,
but with poise.
Not with noise,
but with resonance.
Not with arrogance,
Though let us be honest,
A little sparkle never ruined the thesis. In
July, I am ready.
I bring my intact heart,
my educated mouth,
my ancestral chorus,
my polished nerve,
my tender mischief,
my immaculate boundaries,
and a calendar
that no longer makes space
For lack, dressed up as a lesson.
I bless the woman I was in June,
even the weary one,
especially the weary one,
who kept walking
with her soul in one hand
and her standards in the other.
But July asks for a ceremony.
July asks for entrance music.
July asks me to stop whispering
about the life I came here to claim.
So I arrive.
Not delayed.
Not diminished.
Not diffident.
Not waiting for permission
from people who are still arguing
with their own reflection.
I arrive in Jubilee.
With wit sharp enough
to cut the ribbon
on my next becoming,
with faith broad enough
to house the impossible,
with a body learning pleasure again,
with a spirit that knows
Prosperity is not vulgar
when it is rooted in purpose.
I enter July
as a woman of substance,
softness, intellect, and thunder.
A woman with clean hands,
clear eyes,
a healed appetite,
and a laugh
That sounds suspiciously
like victory.
Let this month find me receptive.
Let it find me rested.
Let it find me paid.
Let it find me loved correctly,
or not bothered at all.
Let it find me brilliant
without explanation,
beautiful without apology,
and blessed
without needing to make the blessing smaller
so others can digest it.
July, pull up a chair.
I have survived enough winters
to know how to behave
when the sun finally calls me by name—-
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Healing Majestically 