Healing came to me
through the hands of women
who did not call themselves magical,
Though everything they touched
knew how to live again.
Basil in the bowl.
Rosemary at the door.
Cinnamon warms the air
like money had already been received
the invitation.
My grandmother did not explain power.
She stirred it.
She hummed it low.
She placed salt where salt belonged
and let the rest of us learn
What a boundary was.
There is a kind of healing
that does not beg to be believed.
It is quiet, precise, and ancient.
It is ginger in hot water,
garlic in the pan,
bay leaf in the petition,
and a woman finally saying,
I will not abandon myself again.
That is the return.
Not to who I was,
But to who I was before fear
learned my name.
Back to the body.
Back to the altar.
Back to the kitchen,
where the ancestors still pull up chairs
and act like they were never gone.
And honestly,
they were not.
They were in the steam.
In the oil.
In the bitter tea
I drank anyway.
In the prayer I whispered
when I had no audience
and still wanted to live.
Healing is not always soft.
Sometimes it is sharp enough
to cut the lie from the root.
Sometimes it laughs.
Sometimes it says,
Baby, get up.
You have already survived this chapter.
Do not let the footnote take you out.
So I rise.
With herbs in my cabinet,
jazz in my hips,
honey on my tongue,
and discernment sharp enough
to make certain people uncomfortable.
Good.
I was not born
to be convenient.
I was born
to remember.
And every herb knows the way home.
Every root keeps the road.
Every pot becomes a portal
when love is placed inside it.
This is healing.
Ancestral.
Fragrant.
Sacred.
Unrushed.
A woman returning to herself
with the recipe in one hand
and her whole life
finally answering back–
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Healing Majestically 