Preparing My Daughter For Rain

by Key Ballah

I pray that the pain of this life, never ever tightens your throat, or hardens your heart. It is better to be a pile of soft bones, than a wall, made entirely of concrete.

keep you in my heart. So, where ever my heart takes me, where ever my God wills me and where ever my feet decide to go, you are there. Forgive me for hurting you all of the times my tongue was sharp. I am a work in progress and I am learning that your hands have worn years of sacrifice, that your back has carried my burdens and yours, and that you have never tried to lessen that load. Without you, I wouldn’t have learned how to fight.

Even if you gathered all of the oceans into your throat, and all of the light into your hair, there would still be women who have mastered the art of stealing stars out of the sky, and hiding them in their eyes. You are the kind of beautiful that leaves craters in the moon, the kind of beauty that has shaitans banging at the gates of heaven, begging God to let them have one last glimpse of you. Don’t be concerned with other women’s beauty. Only admire God’s amazing work and wish them well, this earth was made to bite us in half and grind us to bone, but we were made to be kind.

Forgiveness is a weighty thing. It is thick, but spreads itself out thin, like trying to love yourself, with only a foggy memory of a time when you knew what that looked like. Forgive yourself, stretch it across your skin, let your forgiveness become you.

Forgiveness is a weighty thing. It is thick, but spreads itself out thin, like trying to love yourself, with only a foggy memory of a time when you knew what that looked like. Forgive yourself, stretch it across your skin, let your forgiveness become you.

Do not allow your body to become a civil war, it is almost impossible to recover. Ask your mother, she will tell you how many years she’s been fighting and how many battles she’s won.

This body is brave even when I am not. Even when I am a puddle of sadness, this body carries the weight well, and I am no light being.

This body is brave even when I am not. Even when I am a puddle of sadness, this body carries the weight well, and I am no light being.

You are an entity. An important part of this universe. A thread in a grand tapestry. You are beautiful, you are powerful, you are here.

I have forgotten, after all of the heartbreak and bad decisions, to thank my heart for not giving up. To thank it for fighting for me, because I know that it’s tired so tired.

Your memory lives on me like an old scar, in a place that only I know, with a story that only I find beautiful.

The bible says, that Eve’s sin was punished by pain in child birth. But the older I get and the more that I see, It has become clear to me that Eve’s punishment wasn’t the pain, her punishment was Adam himself.

I knew that the danger would make me fall in love with him. I am a magnet for men with intentions made of straw. A flame, that sets fire to every sunrise but cuts herself open as a sacrifice for it’s setting. Did you know that women who bleed fire, become black widows for men whose hands haven’t been washed since the last body they painted red? When I looked at you I knew that you could be my undoing, and so I opened my arms and welcomed you home.

You asked me to bend, so I bent ‘til I snapped. a contortionist for love. I split, down the middle, right in half like the temple veil. No rabbi, no priest, no knowledge. Just a woman giving birth to her still born self, and a man who liked to watch her burn for him.

You grew between the cracks of my skin, I built you, cell by cell, over nine full moons, a flower grown from blood. Somewhere in your beautiful mind lives the distant memory, of loving only the sound of my voice and the slow hammer of my heart, you trusted me before you knew me. So if you ever question your capability to love fully, remember you have loved before, and you will love again

Tell him that you don’t like the way that loving him makes you feel, that you wake up every morning aching. Tell him, you hurt more, you sleep less and it always feels like you are too weighty for him.

Your light is bright. You are beautiful. In every space that you occupy you belong where you are comfortable and where your heart is free.