from audre

the radical thing is to 

love without fear

love myself 

without fear of 

who i’m gonna be

or who i was

preserving my heart & soul 

like the jars of jams packed above the stove

in mama’s kitchen —

to be black 

to be blue 

to be in this skin 

in a world that wants nothing to do with u 

is to be 

beyond comprehension

or government intervention,

so we grow self-preservation in our windowsill gardens 

and mold our bones into gold cuz

bLACK gIRLS cOME fROM tHE fUTURE!

where else can we live

when our existence is fugitive?

we had nowhere else to run to 

but the arms of an infinite sky 

where we never had to decolonize our minds because

we were never colonized in the first place

and never had to prove that we mattered in the first place

because the earth held us in her waters and 

reminded us that our worth does not disappear just because white folks 

refuse to see that it’s there. 

don’t worry baby

u ain’t got to prove nothing no more.

u are sacred &

u glow ya hear 

u are here.