I am uncertain
If it was
Safety, Sanctuary or Sisterhood
That caused us to instinctively migrate towards one another like elegant black swans amongst a lake of white lilies
Yet there we found ourselves amongst one another
Able to take off our armor
Speak in our vernacular
Understood one another without needing to say words
It was there in the ‘uh huh’, ‘girrrrrl’, ‘no she didn’t’, ‘they tried it’ and high-fives
That we spoke in a dialect that conjured up thoughts of cornbread, catfish, collard greens and cornrows
For a moment, we could just be sister girls
We laughed and sipped wine
Ate food made for small bites not for mouths shaped like ours that spoke loudly in the key of rage and justice
We knew we would have to leave one another
Disperse ourselves amongst the crowd so we would not be seen as “that group”, “those people” “those Black women” all huddled together
We stood
Strengthened to go back into those spaces amongst the lilies
But for a moment we were just sisters
Finding the power in one another to swim upstream…
Categories: Poetry