The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

by Junauda Petrus

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. A place to reflect, a prayer, a possibility for your existence to be connected to all that exists.

“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.”

“The Blackness between the stars is the melanin in your skin,” he said one night when we were hanging out in the middle of the quad, lying out on blankets, looking at the sky on a crisp and restless night. “I read it in a book. I take it to mean that as Black folks we are limitless.

“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.”