Four Women - Nina Simone

Nayyirah Waheed #Poetry #Mother#Words

She...

"One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else--closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps this person carries within them an angel--one sent to you for some higher purpose; to teach you an important lesson or to keep you safe during a perilous time. What you must do is trust in them--even if they come hand in hand with pain or suffering--the reason for their presence will become clear in due time."

Though here is a word of warning--you may grow to love this person but remember they are not yours to keep. Their purpose isn't to save you but to show you how to save yourself. And once this is fulfilled; the halo lifts and the angel leaves their body as the person exits your life. They will be a stranger to you once more."

- Lang Leav

No Rest In The Queendom

Strength In Numbers

I am the combined strength of everyone who I have shared my story with, the combined strength of everyone who has shared their story with me.
I am the strength of every girl who has fallen victim to a forceful invasion of her womanhood and private parts when she was raped. How she manages to survive, to pick herself up and face life even when every part of her aches for death
I am the strength of every battered woman carrying a home on her shoulders, taking care of a “man” who sees her as nothing but a punching bag. I am her healing when she puts ice on her bruises and gauze on her wounds.
I am the strength of every woman who has ever been lied to by boys who take on the guise of men. Women, who have given their all and loved deeply, truly and without shame to have their love thrown back in their faces when their partners had the audacity to plough into other women and come home to kiss them and lie to their bodies.
I am the strength of every woman who knows what it is like to find out that the “man” you loved, loved someone else. Everyone who knows that feeling that accompanies the discovery of infidelity; like a horse kicking your chest and whipping the wind out of you, like having open heart surgery with no anaesthetic. I am the strength of all those women who have gone through that and more and still have the courage to forgive, to open up and love again with no boundaries, no limits and no pretences.
I am the strength of the girl who underwent genital circumcision this morning. The girl who was told “no, you don’t deserve to feel pleasure when you’re a woman. All you do is provide it. How dare you think that as a woman you can feel pleasure? Let us help you remove that absurd idea from your mind and remove your clitoris”
I am the strength of every woman who experiences street harassment and is called a bitch if she doesn’t entertain it. I am her strength when she walks with her head held high, unashamed, strong and bold. She doesn’t retreat and stop walking the streets because they are littered with filthy pigs. She stores her pride and dares every single day to be called a bitch, slut, trick…
I am the combined strength of all these women and more. Women who have experienced the worst because of their genetic make up. Women who have stared hell in the face but never lose their smile, or their resilience.
I am the combined strength of every woman who has ever shared their story and said through it: “here I am, naked and hurting but brave”. I am the combined strength of everyone who has taken the time to listen to her story and offer her an embrace, taken her out for ice cream, borrowed her an ear or cried with her.
I am the combined strength of every woman who says to the boys in the guise of men who don’t know a woman’s worth: “yes you may try to bend us, but we will never break!”
#Women’sMonth #Strength #Numbers #Sisters

Pain

I took the pain and I used it as fuel, it was an energy source and only I could decide what I wanted to do with the intense energy that came with pain. I chose to convert some of it into forgiveness and I used the rest to propel me forward. I used it to become wiser and stronger

Busi_Ree

Caitlyn Siehl

“Do not fall in love with people like me. 
I will take you to
museums, and parks, and monuments,
and kiss you in every beautiful
place, so that you can
never GO to them
without tasting me
like blood in your mouth.
I will destroy you in the most 
beautiful way possible.
And when I leave 
you will finally understand, 
why storms are named after people.”

There are days when your blankets will weigh heavy on you and press you down hard against the mattress. When a fiery ball fills the sky beckoning a new day ending the darkness of the night. And you will not relate to it or appreciate it because you cannot identify with it. When your insides are the color of coal and unwelcome water stings the corners of your eyes. Days when the lump in your throat threatens to constrict your airways. Your eyelids heavy with sadness will be impossible to open and life will feel like a dark void. Like you have personally experienced days before anything came into existence. A dark wide and unending nothingness. You will want to surrender yourself to it, to let it consume all of you. When those days come allow yourself to feel the darkness, surrender yourself to the darkness only for a moment. feel the numb void of purposeless being because when you do that, once you have explored that kind of darkness, lifelessness, defeat, you will realise that living is far more enjoyable regardless of the struggles it entails.

Alysia Harris "Cab Rides and The Morning After"

She

Home

I promised myself that I would run as far away from home as possible

I was Buddha in search of nirvana

And home was purgatory

So I immersed myself into the belly of a city that tried to spit me out

That is where I met you

Dark, frightening, shrivelled like a prune on the inside

Macho, well dressed and stern on the outside

You were my broken mirror

Reflecting to  me pieces of myself

What I didn’t expect was how your eyes

Deep and dark

Were a spyglass into the world I was trying to escape

When I looked into them I didn’t expect to see home

Staring back at me with a menacing smile

Almost as if it would snarl at me and spit out in a malignant voice a harrowing

“gotcha”

Poem by Thobeka "TBK" Msane

We lay on the remains of our hearts 
Smeared in the little blood we could salvage
Waiting while they continue to sow what we will reap…
They sow what we will reap…

Our hearts were far too pure to slave away and create a nest
that would breed such deadly thorns
intent on hurting what only has nurturing intentions…

So here we lay after the latest battle 
So accustomed to the wreckage 
We have the will to numb our bruises and salvage 
what is left of our hearts… 

Smeared in the remains…
Remains of the hope that one day 
a brave soldier will walk by 
while we lay here 
and be the one 
to find and restore 
the pieces of our lonely broken hearts…

"

- Thobeka “TBK” Msane

The darkest thing about our skin tone is not the pigment but the dark shackles that come with it

 

What we cannot say in words our bodies will say for us

This is how we have come to communicate our pain:

Red lipstick on cigarette butts

Lips interlocked with strangers

Hips swaying to music our souls never dance to

Sandwich between foreign sheets

Loud slurs of “get me another drink”

Feet a tangled mess tripping over each other.

Then at three am, under skies black as our skin,

when the music goes off

and the crowd has thinned:

Deep rumbling cries,

Uncontrollable tears.

Something to consider

I found this picture on Facebook and it spoke to me.

Loneliness

Loneliness is five dishes waiting for you in the sink:

The first with remnants of ice cream

Which you ate till you felt nauseous -

At least you felt something

The second a plate with remnants of

A microwave dinner:

which singed your taste buds with the taste of stale cheese

And soggy macaroni

At least you were not the only thing that tasted ugly.

You and the revolting macaroni and cheese could share a bond;

You were both difficult to hold close and savour

Both of you were unwanted, unappreciated

Nobody wanted to hold you close to the lips.

The last three dishes in the sink were clean but you put them there anyway

So that the ice cream bowl and microwave dinner plate could have company

You didn’t want the dishes to experience what you were experiencing

You refused to let them become lonely.

Childhood

Everything begins in childhood, it is the most crucial stage in a person's life. Some of the most important lessons are learned in childhood. And for some, like me, childhood is a period of strengthening. Here is a recollection of parts of my childhood. Parts that have created vivid stains on my memory.

Childhood

I’ve got these vivid recollections of my childhood that stain my memory.

Glass shattering, doors slamming constant repetitions of ‘bitch’, 'fuck you',‘I hate you’.

 And me, with a pillow wrapped around my head

Soaked all the way through

 Trying desperately to muffle the thuds and screams

 That penetrate the walls that are meant to keep them out.

And December, goodness I hate December.

 A month that carries on its shoulders the delicacies of Christmas and New Years

 and never have I hated anything as much as I hate those days.

 They start out the same way:

 food cooking on the stove,

 glasses of alcohol

 and then at around 8pm…

 the demons begin to manifest themselves,

gripping and strangling to death whatever piece of happiness there was during the day.

Then it begins all over again, shouts, screams, doors banging and constant repetitions

 of ‘bitch', 'fuck you''I hate you'

Colouring in black stodgy pen,

the “season to be jolly’

So I’ve tried to escape it,

Every chance that I could

Spending it with friends

Drinking myself into a coma

So as to numb my brain,

get it to try and forget,

restrict it from wondering

if perhaps at that exact moment,

In a place I call home

Two people I love,

are constantly repeating the lyrics to the background song of my childhood;

‘bitch’, ‘fuck you’, I hate you

With a door slamming in the background.

Busi

Chronicles

I looked up the word chronicles the other day. All I wanted really was a clear definition of the word. Being a second language English speaker, I do this often. What I wasn't expecting though, was the title to a blog that I have been putting off for months. See i started blogging almost two years ago and discontinued the blog i had for two reasons, 1. I couldn't find time and 2. Some of the writing on my blog made me blush. I have however been wanting to set up a new blog because I enjoyed blogging and sharing my experiences with my friends, family and even people whose names I will never know.

So that is how this blog, Chronicles, was born. When I looked up the word chronicle I found that it meant a description of events in the order that they happened, an account or recollection of some sort. Of course this is perfect because I want to share my experiences. As for the long blog address? Well I don't know either maybe we can figure it out together.

So here is to a brand new start, a new blog, a new home for my thought and new experiences.


Peace and love
Busi

#Chronicles #ThemakingsOfAWoman