soft magic.

by Upile Chisala

it is when we don’t believe we are enough for ourselves that we start looking for people to drown in.

don’t let the first time your daughter hears you’re proud of her be at her wedding.

honey, you need to say the thing before it forms a storm in your chest. you can’t keep carrying anger in your bones because you are too afraid of letting poison out. freeing yourself from the thing won’t make you serpentine. you mustn’t keep anger tucked in your skin like that. please darling, say the thing you mean to say. say the thing before it builds a home in your blood. say the thing before you become the thing itself.

don’t cheat yourself out of happiness you deserve all the damned chances all the damned tries, so darling please stop thinking of new ways to die.

maybe we carry our mothers’ faults in our bones too, maybe our fathers’ sins are stifled in the blood. I am sorry, maybe we inherited some of their pain. (what they carelessly gave us. what they’ve been trying to take back)

am still learning to make language out of pain, to write out all the ache. I am still teaching my fragile and my strong that they can co-exist.