Regardless

I typed out, “You’re beautiful, someone must be lucky to have you…”

And then I wondered,

Why I thought beautiful things had to be owned.

Like you couldn’t be amazing in and of yourself,

Without that being enough.

And then I felt a shadow of shame;

These are the kind of thoughts that kill flowers.

The picking of them for but a moments appreciation,

Then the casting away of interrupted beauty. 

“Afrolicious”

Paging through Cosmo, she looked up at me and asked, “do you prefer weave or braids?”

I couldn’t help but smile a suggestive smile and reply, “I prefer nothing more than your Afro.”

I’ve seen her combing through her beautifully natural, long and wonderful hair, and I love it when she lets it grow.

I believe, biased and self-informed as I am, that someone somewhere told our women –

They didn’t measure up, and that they with their dark crowns weren’t beautiful enough.

Yes, “our women.” Our stunning, attractive, sun-kissed, ebony and brown skinned women.

African-American, Caribbean, Black, Mixed Race, it doesn’t matter which box you tick.

Whether your hair is nappy or neat, curly wavy or straight,

It doesn’t define you and you are just as beautiful as you always have been;

You are deliciously you – you are Afrolicious.

T.

Tribute to the angels

She is beautiful, she is brown, she is dark, she is divine.
She is more than her curly hair and thick lips, she is so fine.
Strong as a cup of black coffee, sweet as honey, as delicate as a butterfly.
Her curves are lethal, her body is gracious: she is a perfection that doesn’t even try.
She smiles with her eyes, encourages with her touch, emboldens with her words.
She is African, American, Caribbean, she is ethnic, she is genuine.
I see her on the streets, in class, & even on television; I see her in my niece who is almost nine.
She has borne me, nursed me and raised me,
She has been my sister, my lover, and my most beloved enemy.

She enlightens me and craddles me in the bosom of her understanding.
In the echos of the past her voice gives me courage, tells me to keep going.
She is a self made heroine, a thinker,a fighter, a friend.
She rises above her circumstances,  she hopes and dreams & when she loves, it is to the end.

She is ambitious, she is motivated, she is the heat within the flame.

The embodiment of what is wild and exciting, she may be reserved at times but she will never be tame.
She is precious, and important,  she is just as much royalty as was Cleopatra.
I will raise my daughter on this theme, her sovereignty shall be her mantra.
To the world she is just a black woman, but to me she’

s a brown angel.