I have been trying to write this for a long time. Not because I do not know what to say. Because I do not know how to say it without it sounding small. And she deserves more than small.
I want to make love to the existence of black women. To drench myself in the colors of their energy. To lose myself inside myself until I find them there. Because that is what it feels like. Not romance. Not desire. Something older than that. Something that sits in the chest like a weight you do not want to put down. Something that does not leave when the conversation ends. Something that stays when the room is empty and the lights are off and you are alone with the truth of what you have seen.
(the thing about black women that nobody tells you is that once you see it you cannot unsee it. It is like a color that did not exist before. And now it is everywhere.)
The way she carries herself through this world. The way she walks into a room and the room does not know what happened but something shifted. The sound of her voice when she is tired and still kind. The way she laughs. The way she does not laugh. The way she holds the weight of everyone else and then goes home and sits in the dark for a while because that is the only time nobody is asking her for something.
There is a poem by Leopold Sedar Senghor. He wrote about the black woman as ripe fruit as the savannah as the east wind. He called her the spiritual song of the beloved. And I understand what he meant even if his words were beautiful and incomplete. Because you cannot capture it in a poem. You can only stand in front of it and feel stupid for ever trying to reduce it to language.
(Senghor knew. He knew that the black woman was the thing that made the world worth writing about. That is why he wrote. That is why all of them wrote.)
I think about my mother. I think about the women who raised me. The ones who taught me what patience looks like when it has a face and a name and hands that are rough from work. The ones who stayed. Who did not run. Who held the house together with nothing but willpower and the refusal to let their children see them break.
bell hooks said love is not a feeling. It is a choice. A practice. A commitment to another person’s spiritual growth. And if that is true then black women have been practicing love longer than anyone. Because they have been loving in a world that does not love them back. That takes a kind of strength I do not have. That takes a kind of grace I can only witness from a distance.
(the grace is in the doing. In the showing up. In the making a way out of no way. In the braiding of hair at 6 AM before school. In the cooking meals from nothing. In the working two jobs and still making it to the game. In the crying in the shower so the children do not hear.)
I want to talk about the beauty. Not the kind they sell in magazines. Not the kind that fits in a frame. The beauty that catches you off guard. The beauty of a black woman who has been crying and is still the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. The beauty of a black woman who is angry and does not care who knows it. The beauty of a black woman who is tired and still finds the strength to be soft. The beauty of a black woman who has every reason to be hard and chooses tenderness instead.
The beauty of her skin. The way light does different things on different shades. The way melanin is not just a pigment. It is a miracle. It is the sun trapped in the body. It is the color of the earth. It is the color of everything that has ever been rich and deep and worth looking at.
(if you have never seen a black woman glow in golden hour then you have not lived. I am not being poetic. I am being factual.)
There is a beauty in black women that the world has tried to steal for centuries. They tried to take it through slavery. Through Jim Crow. Through the beauty standards that said her hair was wrong and her nose was wrong and her lips were wrong and her skin was wrong. They tried to reduce her to a body. To a commodity. To a thing that exists for someone else’s consumption.
And still she stood. Still she rose. Still she walked into rooms where she was not wanted and made them hers. Still she loved herself when the world told her not to. Still she looked in the mirror and said I am beautiful. Still she said I am worthy. Still she said I am enough.
(Maya Angelou knew. She knew that still she rose was not just a poem. It was a description. It was a fact. It was the only way to describe what happens when you try to bury a black woman and she decides she is a seed.)
I think about Toni Morrison. Who wrote with a fury that could only come from love. Who said the function of freedom is to free someone else. Who understood that the black woman’s body was a site of both trauma and transcendence. Who wrote Sethe in Beloved who killed her own child rather than let her be taken back into slavery. Because that is love. That is the kind of love that breaks your heart and makes you stand up at the same time.
I think about Nina Simone. Who said it is an artist’s duty to reflect the times. Who sang Strange Fruit and made you feel the weight of every lynching. Who was beautiful and knew it and refused to apologize for it. Who was angry and knew it and refused to soften it for anyone.
(Nina Simone did not sing. She testified. Every note was a witness statement. Every song was a court case. And the verdict was always the same. This world owes black women everything and has given them nothing.)
I think about the ones I know. The ones who are not famous. The ones who do not have platforms or audiences. The ones who go to work every day and come home and take care of their families and never ask for anything. The ones who are quietly holding the world together while the world pretends it does not need them.
The ones who love hard. Who love so hard it scares you. Because you realize you have never been loved like that. You have never been loved with that kind of intensity. That kind of devotion. That kind of willingness to burn for you if it means you will be warm.
(there is a myth that black women are strong. That they do not need help. That they can carry everything. And it is a myth because it is used to justify not helping them. To justify not loving them. To justify taking from them because they can handle it. But they should not have to handle it. They should not have to be strong all the time. They should be allowed to be weak. To be soft. To be held.)
And this is what I wanted to say. This is what I have been trying to say with all these words and all these references and all these half-formed thoughts. Black women are the most beautiful thing this world has ever produced. And this world has not been kind to them. And they have been kind to this world anyway. And that is the thing that breaks me. That is the thing that makes me want to write this and rewrite it and never feel like it is enough. Because it is not enough. Nothing I write will ever be enough.
(but I will write it anyway. Because the alternative is silence. And silence is just another way of participating in the erasure.)
So here it is. My appreciation. Inadequate and small and full of gaps. To the black women who have loved me. To the black women who have taught me. To the black women who have shown me what it means to be human in a world that is not always human. To the black women who are reading this right now and wondering if it is for them. It is. It is always for them.
I want to drink the sweat off your intellect Reflect and watch your light passion mark my neck Caress the sight of your presence with no question Undress, to the nakedness of love, pure love I want to make love to my soul mate, uh, my soul mate Make love to my soul mate, uh, my soul mate
in the words of Akua Naru
Thank you. For everything. For the sacrifice. For the love. For the beauty. For the grace. For the strength. For the softness. For the everything.
If love had a sound this would be that sound. And we. Well we. We would be the band to play it.
