The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

by Junauda Petrus

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

I’m like that, I got a lot of layers too, but I think other kids think I’m just this whatever tomboy Black girl, who always reading and playing ball or working out or something. I basically fit in, which is okay, but sometimes, I wish I felt comfortable to put my layers out there more.

Queenie felt like hearing some blues that morning, and she was in a Ma Rainey mood. She said, “Dis wine we is making is for drinking slowly, for contemplation and healing emotional weight that is and ain’t yours, like the blues women.”

Protect your heart and spirit. You is open and that is powerful but also vulnerable. I had to say something ’cause anything can happen in the world of love,”

“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.”

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. The sky looked brand-new. There were so many stars and mists of galaxy above us, I heard gasps from some of the other captive cats, and then silence from the awe of it. 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.

“Mom.” “Yes, honey?” “I’m afraid. A lot.” It’s all I can get out of my mouth to say. My mom sighs and nods her head at me, as I snuggle closer to her. “Baby, I can’t imagine how you feel. I love you so much. I feel afraid too.” It’s the first I ever heard her speak about being afraid of what’s happening to me. “I don’t know how to feel, Mom.” “You just need to feel how you feel, girl. You don’t need to do nothing but be you.” She looks down at me and strokes my forehead.

“Audre, I think what many parents struggle with, mine included, is that they may not know how to love us in the way that we need. I think that being a parent can bring up a lot of your own fears and traumas and a lot of parents don’t know how to not pass that on to their own kids,” he says.

“A poet, Audre Lorde,” I say, which is what my mom told me years ago. “Yes, but there was a quote I found of hers, when your mom was pregnant, that made me want to name you after her. ‘If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched up into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.’” He recites it smoothly from memory. “I knew I wanted you to be a kid that always felt free to be yourself, since I never did.

“Life is hard for women, because we strong and the world ain’t wan’ to love us for it. From since I young, I see it.”

The sparkling lights of the rides and food stands are dazzling against the plum alchemy of the sky becoming.