I am walking out of the grocery store.
Yesterday, my friend told me to ask the Divine One to heal, to bring hope and freedom to the sexually traumatized parts of my mind and body. She told me to ask for specific moments of healing, and that she KNEW they would come to me if I asked.
After more than a year without flashbacks, an event had come out of nowhere this week, and started the vivid images and memories playing like a tape on repeat.
“what do I do?”
I ask, and it is a sigh, a sob, and a prayer.
The tapes play on silent, but the subtitles read:
Replaceable
PROPERTY
Old news
NO CHOICE
Saggy
WORTHLESS
THEN
I hear it like a soft whisper.
“loosen your waist”
“open your hips, let them swing the way they were meant to”
I imagine my skeleton, the way my bones move and glide together, the gait of a human being, in slow motion.
I breath deeply.
I drop my waist. I open my hips. They sway and swing.
I lift my eyes, instinctually, and a smile spreads across my face.
The girl scout cookie mama catches my eye, and we grin at each other, I suspect we are in on the wonder of it together.
These words pulse in my heart and up into my throat.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
And just like that, another wave of healing has broken over this weary soul.
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
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