For the Women

Being from the South, the area I grew up in is built on a former death camp. Some of y’all would call it a plantation. When we first moved there, various sections of the neighborhood would sprout vegetables in neighbors’ yards. Our section grew green onions every year. Imagine the smell when we cut our grass… making our eyes swell. Rightfully so.

The family of murderers who owned this land still have a well-kept graveyard in the middle of the neighborhood. My mother still lives there. Yes, the family of the murderers still come to tend those graves. Yes, the developers left that space undisturbed and built homes all around it, gated and protected it— as if it were sacred land. Honeysuckles climbed the gate and bloomed every year. We would sit atop the fence and eat them… we were young and didn’t understand.

I came home in my Senior year of college, sat on the reclaimed land of that death camp, and thought of all the women who fought all their life for the freedom they only found in death. The ones who harvested those green onions and alllll their babies and grandbabies, and great-grands and so on…

Then, they enfolded this poem in my journal. Sadly, there are so many more since who “lost their lives before we won the fight”. So many more finding their first dance with freedom in the other side.

So, this poem is for those women who are singing #BreonnaTaylor’s first two-step with freedom while we march for justice.