Pride & Poetry
Photo: Steve Johnson on Unsplash
‘You rested in our rainbow, / too many silences sit across us, / staring in our eyes, / waiting for us to speak.’
- Amya Roy
To Audre Lorde,
the woman who taught me
P for Pride.
You rested in our rainbow,
too many silences sit across us,
staring in our eyes,
waiting for us to speak.
It is this, the person sitting across,
not the disparity, that immobilises us.
You taught me,
what we need is —
the transformation of silence,
into language and action.
That a woman’s pride lies in
holding hands with these spectrums
we inherited without blame.
You taught me,
P for Poetry.
The power of words mortified into meaning,
and tenoned through practice,
the honesty about who we are
and who we will become.
We grow to thrive inside the
solitude of suspicion,
the suspicion of sleeping in a closet.
Poetry is not a luxury,
but a pivotal want of our longevity.
It cobbles together
the remotest horizons of our
memories & worries,
sculpted from crystal impressions
of our everyday lives.
We lend our hands for help,
wearing the gloves of poetry.
We name the nameless,
so it can be thought of —
in cafes, in bars,
and in our parades.
