The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

by Junauda Petrus

CANCER SEASON season of Yemeya our bottomless dark deep wet healer warrior of our waters and conductor of our tides the moon shines on you you are floating on her waters she is pleasure immersive and she soaks you to heal and rocks you to sleep she is the constellation of the armored warrior of water and sand she protects softness she a shelled thing that scamper away and hide and protect protecting the pearl of sacred sensuality a mango seed, an intuitive lover the heavy and healing waters of your motherlands and eternal shades of the moon

“Gyal, you been in constant communication with Spirit your whole life and you been taught that Spirit speak loudest when we deep in the water, drowning in trouble and fear.”

wanting to feel the wind and sky she pull down cool my chest and lift up the space my heart is crumpled in.

I ain’t understand how God finally make sense in your arms and in your church.

“It’s not right,” and the other one says, “But it’s okay.”

In the mirror, I looked into my own eyes again and I saw a piece of lightning and hurricane look back into me.

All of us got poetry in us, ’cause our lives are in constant motion and unfolding, and when we observe it and behold it, it becomes poetry.

I am bored with this beat. I seek a different dance toward death.

“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.”

I’m a tight bud and I try to melt a little, so I can open.

auntie is a lover who allow the pots to simmer and set in flavors passed down from tired hands whose names she don’t remember and never knew just the love is what she tastes and the love is what remain

With the cold and soft dirt on my face, I feel alive. I see my breath become smoke in the cold air. I am alive, my breath is proof,

But I was a boy once. And to be honest, I can’t help but hold and carry him inside of me. Most of us in here is holding and carrying a scared and lonely little child in us. How could we not?

I protect that young boy’s soul by reminding him he is infinite, like the stars and the blackness between them.

Audre, see how the moon fat and full? Ripe. That’s when it have the power of an old wild woman. The moon is a euphoric warrior now. Shining she light for we to witness our true self, eh.”

“Audre, what you see and feel is true; who you are is divine. All of this is God. The mango, the bake, each bush in the yard. Sacred, each chicken crying at dawn. Each lesson that hurts you, and each hair on your head that reach for the stars is God.”

Even though I know this can be a messed-up world, I want to know it more.

Our planet seemed inherently gentle when viewed from space, a rounded, smooth and simple Eden, innocently hovering in galactic murkiness. Maybe, as a kid, I subconsciously thought distance would make the heart grow fonder of the life I had.

On death row, in some ways, I feel like I did become the astronaut of my childhood aspirations. I live suspended, distant and hyperaware of all existence. I’m alien, yet affiliated, living like a satellite, away from all that I have ever known.

It was the first time I’d seen night in years. How do you explain the feeling of seeing the night sky after years and years of artificial light and darkness, a life of walls? It felt like I was arriving to this planet for the first time.

We were convicts of earth entering a cosmic cathedral.

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.

let the fire become lava and it will create lands for Eden

Death felt like it was the clothes I wore every day.

I guess life has a lot of little deaths before we leave this planet officially.

Nothing in life prepares you for death, and the certain promise of it. Whether it is your own death or someone you love. And nothing in life prepares you to live, truly live, knowing that death is near.

Whether any of our souls continue to journey into other stars and worlds (which is what I believe) or if this life on this beautiful and bitter rock is all there is, you get to choose your relationship to life. And it don’t got to look like no one else’s.

The answer I found for myself is that we must go within. Within us is a universe that no one can touch.

Lying there with her, I feel like if I could be as perfect as nature, maybe I could live forever.

This, I can do all day, every day. For real, Queenie. Be in nature and read clouds, read all of the songs of life in the wind,”

“You look like you travelin’ inside yourself,” she say.

I know how it feel when your soul is telling you what you need to do to be happy and it seem strange to everybody in the world. You feel like you gotta do it or a piece of your spirit will never be whole,”

“You an old soul in the body of a young wild woman, and they both need to dance.”

“The prettiest voices are kites for the heaviest hearts,”

The couple is dancing and watching each other, not noticing or even thinking of we. In La Palais, they were like all of us. All of we being our full self in a world where most of we is told to contort, lie, or die.

Before I even know the words lesbian or bull dyke, I fell in love with my best

friend one Harlem summer on a rooftop watching clouds move and make shapes above us.

No one ever tell you that falling in love with another Black girl would allow you to feel like you a part of an ancient and precious secret. When we spoke it was soul to soul. My body felt her stories and poetry, and I would just surround myself in her day after day. To see Junie, this brilliant black star, I couldn’t help but love myself.

Every woman I have loved has shown me Goddess and devastation and I thank them every day for the lessons and insights in their love.

I want my body to stop moving into irreversible oblivion.

i am the first green bud within the seeming never-ending frost, seeking sun is the desire to erupt. a break into life, a possibility for lushness and becoming.

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

I don’t know if it’s the weed or the lateness of the evening, but Audre’s accent is more splashy and reckless and she is killing me softly and I think if I have to die, let it be softly. In her arms, in her smell, in her gap.

And I melt right there. I die, right there, the sweetest disappearing into her. All night and into the early morning.

I love you more than the universe can hold,

As we come closer to the water, I anticipate the wet lick of the first wave on our feet; in fact, I is yearning for it. Mabel stops me when we almost to the edge and just stands and looks at the beyond in front of us. Then she closes her eyes and lifts her head to the sun, and I see the rays is kissing she up. I lift my head and close my eyes so I can bask in it too.

The air feel hot like a kiss, and the ocean breeze find its way to my scalp and cheeks and it remind me to slow down and take all of this in. The sky and the way my body feels. The way my heels feel in my sandals and the sensation of the African fabric I have wrapped around my shoulders and the blue above me ripening into blackness.

we dream her in the library in the future mercury mind silver tongue with books under her arm from each section her mind can’t drink enough