For Audre and Toni
Audre Lorde is my auntie. Her essences seep into the taupe folds and freckles of my father’s eldest sister.
We all called her something else, but Audre was her name. Queer and fearless. Powerful in the swing of her hips, the flick of her brush, and the poetry on her lips. Bald-headed in the way that she was. Unapologetic in the way that she danced across our minds. Adorned by white praise she cared so little about. Her soul was fed by us. Art was her magic carpet across boundaries and borders; her golden ticket into a world that was always hers.
She brought me along sometimes too, ushering me into what I now know as Black womanhood. I twirled and bloomed in her eclectic collections of shoes and skeletons, bucky done gun giving me the rhythm I carry today.
Knowing hate and love alike. She teaches me to balance all that we hold glittering beneath volatile vibranium skin. She showed me strength in her weakness, joy in her sadness, pleasure in her pain. She danced across lovers with a delicate ease, swallowed volumes whole. She gave me anger, glory, goodness and resistance in the tragedies she surmounted. She unfolded my girlhood so that I could be.
Audre was my auntie.
My mother is Toni. Brown braided. Baked in richly satined hues. Giving me life, she shows me a Black woman’s grace even through her pain.
Fearsome dark eyes ignite fires in the bellies of enemies and lovers alike. I always thought I can’t reach her, unable to speak the same language. She speaks in rhythms and spirits, sending the vibrations of her voice to lull me to sleep as a child. Her bosom, warmer than her inside voice, held me so tight that her heartbeat is mine.
She broke walls down in my name, endured the tortured gazes of those who say we don’t belong. She straps her crime and shame to her back, their distrust and disdain to her chest. She slips a veil, covering her head and mind. She wears glorious armor, a warrior against the world that calls her jezebel. She gives me God and shows me her Black skin armor in the watery reflection on the surface of my tears. She teaches me redemption through self-love. And now shines anew. Triumphant over whoever she once was, she leads new women to their destined fate.
My mother is Toni Morrison.
