The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

by Junauda Petrus

“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.”

Maybe the world would’ve loved her if she was queer. I would’ve, no doubt.

And from then on, love was all we knew how to do.

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.

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.”

my mama’s womb is encrusted in rubies of calcified blood heirlooms of mothers and grandmothers whose womb never got to belong to them

Remember that you are from the stars and that you can return to them.

And I know she wouldn’t have said that if I said I was liking some boy, so, why is liking girls a phase?”

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

“Life is hard for women, because we strong and the world ain’t wan’ to love us for it.

“This is a perfect moment.” “It is the most perfect moment that ever was.”