The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

by Junauda Petrus

But every land is a mother’s land, I discover.”

“Life is strange, and it will break you to help you heal ancient wounds, me dahlin’.”

You is open and that is powerful but also vulnerable.

Queenie’s words: “Let the pain leave out of you with each breath. It want to be free too,”

“I love you, Audre. I love you, Audre. I love you. I won’t let nothing happen to you. This is your body. It belongs to you. These are your hands. They belong to you. These are your feet. They belong to you. I love you, Audre.” I say things to myself, like I is a sweet grandma. Like I is my own ancestor. And I say it to me from me. “I love you, Audre. You are safe.”

Incarceration is a sustained, lifetime lynching, meant to discard your soul and make a shell of you in plain life. Make you into your monster self, the beast that comes out when you are forced to survive in the absence of love and safety. Never mind that most of us come broken and traumatized, we still are no longer worth our own humanity. We are a criminal.

book. I take it to mean that as Black folks we are limitless. That, maybe, our blackness holds our ancient cosmic memory. What if our wisdom can come from our dreams, not just churches and Bibles?”

Remember that you are from the stars and that you can return to them. Remember you are a sacred being of love, no matter the darkness of an earthly life. Remember you come from light and return to freedom. Remember you are the healing of your ancestors, that you are Chiron the wounded healer. You heal through the compassion you give to yourself. Remember you are an astronaut of the soul. May you find solace in your travel to another star.

“You is free too. ’Cause I is ol’, I feel like people finally let me be.” She pause as if she is in thoughts far away from us and this time. “But you, Queenie. Don’t wait to be free.”

‘If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched up into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.’”