soft magic. Read online

  soft magic

  - Upile Chisala

  Copyright © 2015 Upile Chisala

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in

  any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written

  permission of the publisher or author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1516967889

  ISBN-10: 1516967887

  dedication

  for my loved ones,

  gone and living.

  I am dripping melanin and honey.

  I am black without apology.

  Today and all days,

  I am thankful for women of color

  who love/write/create/emote

  from the root

  and never

  apologize for their magic.

  I want to think that God smiles

  when a black woman

  is brave enough to love herself.

  now that I know

  the soft magic of your laugh

  and how your body moves like art,

  why would I ever go back?

  what was before you?

  child of color on a journey to loving yourself,

  if these poems find you on your saddest day

  please feel free to eat them whole.

  (they are yours, after all)

  sadly,

  when the ocean is your border

  you must make do.

  home is far

  and your hunger for it

  might make your bones ache.

  so you study supermarkets

  till you know where

  to can find

  goat meat

  and

  cassava

  and

  cornmeal

  and

  peanut flour

  and

  okra

  and

  dried fish

  and

  pumpkin leaves,

  food that jogs your memory,

  after all

  you must make do.

  I am sorry,

  home is far and

  you’re hungry for it

  and

  the stubborn ocean won’t disappear.

  my father gave me math.

  my mother gave me magic.

  I have been using both to love you.

  sweet child,

  dance into the light.

  happiness is waiting for you.

  people who only wish to stifle your bloom,

  do not belong in your garden.

  please tell your dark daughters that they are loved.

  you are a woman after your own heart,

  darling,

  that is the bravest thing you could possibly be.

  here you are,

  black and woman and in love with yourself.

  you are terrifying.

  they are terrified.

  (as they should be).

  my mother tells me she raised herself.

  see….

  she has always been both sunshine and rain for me,

  I am in awe of how she survived and became a flower

  with neither.

  (for my mother, the strongest woman I know).

  I was intended for you,

  lover,

  what does the ocean matter?

  all the lovely women living in your blood are trying to teach you their soft magic,

  please pay attention to them.

  dark girl,

  dream all those dreams.

  I hope to do with words what dancers do with limbs.

  remind your little girls with kinks in their hair

  and skin as dazzling as the night sky

  that they too are miracles,

  that they too are warriors.

  remind their little souls of the goddesses

  they are always meant to be.

  fighting sadness is necessary war.

  I write you poems because God spoke the universe into existence,

  so don’t ever let me hear you say that words are just words.

  that

  words don’t leave a mark,

  make a change,

  create where once was nothing.

  I must warn you,

  there is soft juju at work in my thighs.

  To the mothers

  who fed us poems

  till our bellies

  had no room for

  self-doubt,

  thank you.

  1. Do not accept the love of a man who makes you feel small, the universe is already so vast.

  2. You are innately beautiful and completely irreplaceable.

  3. You don’t have to go far to find love and validation, start from within.

  4. Boys are boys and men are mean, tell them apart.

  5. Be alone often, as you are, but don’t that turn into loneliness.

  6. Remember to remain gentle.

  7. Don’t stay angry at the world too long. Seek out life in little things and move past sadness.

  8. Touch somebody, with your hands or with your heart, with your words or with your silence. Share yourself.

  9. Celebrate your skin.

  10. Be yourself and never apologize for being someone you love.

  here, kiss me

  let me give you the city I have been carrying

  in my mouth.

  it is when we don’t believe we are enough for ourselves

  that we start looking for people to drown in.

  to the girl at battle with her body,

  I pray you find a place to lay your weapons down.

  darling,

  women like you are known to carry war between your teeth and still manage to slide soft words off your tongue.

  you baffle them with how you fit both

  battle and peace

  in your body.

  the trouble is,

  some of us are terribly tender

  and god-awful at picking lovers!

  and it can feel like we want love

  more than it wants us.

  I am not sorry that we can’t share a room anymore

  without the walls tightening,

  without the furniture sweating.

  darling,

  we created all this heat between us

  we used to burn for each other,

  remember?

  please…..

  feed your sons the same softness you feed your daughters.

  Little boys with sunshine in their giggles

  are being mistaken for men

  because their bodies were built like those of

  warriors.

  (for the moon-high baby boys of color who are still growing into their warrior bones. You are little. You are loved)

  you were born balancing languages on your tongue,

  your family is several borders living under one roof,

  bickering in the blood.

  darling,

  wherever you find yourself

  you are foreign.

  rough translations

  this whole ocean of a body misses you.

  come swimming darling,

  come swimming.

  ______________________________

  bwenzi,

  ndine nyanja

  dzandisambire.

  sometimes I eat poems

  late at night

  when there’s war in my belly

  and

  I’ve been tossing and turning

  for hours,

  trying to sleep you out of my skin.

  darling,

  I am snacking on soft words again,

  you left me none,

  you left me nothing

  to fuel the honey in my bones

  to wake the fire in my veins

  you left me
nothing

  you left me none,

  so I slip out from between the sheets

  and feast on all the poems

  you should’ve written for me.

  all the poems

  I should’ve written for myself.

  dear lover,

  I am sorry we can’t pray away the ocean that parts us.

  when your grandmother dies,

  she does not remain in the ground or in the picture on your beside table.

  you will find, that when a man kisses new dreams into you

  you remember to thank her for your face

  and the lessons she whipped into your skin

  thank her for

  making you worthy of good love

  again and again.

  girl, who taught you to be so silent?

  to fold your opinion back into your mouth so neatly?

  I remember the first time you feel in love.

  you said even the water tasted funny,

  and taking in air felt like sipping galaxies.

  you looked at everything like you’d never seen it before.

  this is the first time I realized that

  love for a moment or a season,

  can make an entire universe seem like it was just created.

  you seldom know how to share yourself ,

  you are used to men

  half-loving you

  and not saying please,

  so when he was all knees at your kiss

  all plea in your arms

  you didn’t understand that a man

  could coil so pretty

  carry such softness in his voice

  and ask you so sweetly

  for a portion,

  for a place wedged beside you

  and all your thoughts,

  you didn’t understand

  that your love was worth the beg

  and how beautiful it was for a man

  to become just bones and skin

  until you kiss hope into him.

  to the men who act like they were the first to ever love a dark girl,

  I will say

  ‘I have loved this skin since before you breathed on it’

  darling,

  remember to run from men who promise you completion.

  you are already whole.

  fighting sadness with the bottle hasn’t worked for anyone in your bloodline yet,

  so drop it,

  make a warm meal instead.

  wear something clean darling

  and work on living.

  get in the habit of celebrating yourself

  from skin to marrow,

  you are magic.

  before your hips came in

  you were taught

  how to be a woman

  and

  how much woman to be.

  your grandmother told you

  “you become a woman the day you can take

  heavy words

  and grind them till they are

  honey”

  too many earth-toned men and women

  barred

  and broken,

  bodied

  and bleeding

  black and begging

  black and barely breathing.

  too many honey-skinned people

  beaten

  and burnt

  and bruised

  and bibled.

  too many melanin children being put to bed

  early in tight boxes,

  playgrounds and prayerhouses

  becoming graveyards and tombs,

  too many beautifully black babies

  barely out of womb are being buried.

  I am baffled at how blackness…

  this holy blackness

  this sacred blackness

  this blessed blackness!

  has become a sentence

  has become offense

  felony

  misdemeanor

  misdeed

  so when black blood bleeds it is minor

  it is commonplace

  it is expected.

  so when black blood bleeds.

  a system doesn’t cry.

  His kisses are love letters addressed to my soul.

  beloved,

  gather up all the hurt in your body

  and tell it how you weren’t meant for broken.

  consider this:

  your body is a blessing.

  where it curves,

  sags,

  wrinkles.

  where it was scarred

  burnt,

  touched,

  all of this is a map of your life.

  your body is memory

  some sweet

  some sad

  but memory nonetheless

  your soul is living

  in a house of stories.

  your body is memory.

  you are the answer to a prayer I was too proud to pray.

  you are beautiful,

  and your wings are made of the things they threw in your face,

  the things that were meant to make you even smaller

  in a universe so vast.

  but you wove them together,

  those treacherous old things,

  and made wings.

  what a beautiful creature you are!

  what a beautiful creature you’ve always been !

  I look like my father.

  I emote like my mother.

  - how God dished out the meal.

  sir,

  for nine months you too swam in mother blood.

  tell me, how do you manage

  to hate a woman with every bone in your body?

  darling,

  there’s no such thing

  as a coin with one side.

  I am honey

  and lemon.

  dear mother,

  I hope to inherit all your tenderness

  and the thorough way in which you love.

  don’t let the first time your daughter hears you’re proud of her be at her wedding.

  and today,

  your bones

  gathered your skin

  and said

  “Come on, let’s do it again”

  Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is thankless heart work.

  the first time,

  and all times after,

  remember not to lose yourself

  in the theory of a man.

  if you are a miracle on thunder thighs

  wrapped in sacred skin,

  this is a poem

  to remind you to stop and feel

  the life traveling in your body,

  you are many great things.

  you are many great things.

  you are many great things.

  darling,

  your strong bones were formed in a womb.

  you started from softness.

  you came from gentle,

  please remember that when you love.

  some days our prayers are twice as loud

  and thrice as long,

  some days they need to be.

  Fall for yourself,

  shamelessly.

  home is my mother’s voice.

  save some soft poems for yourself,

  you need your love just as much as the next person.

  try your best not to love empty men,

  they are ugly in the mouth.

  darling,

  your body is not a burial ground for the insecurities of others.

  your mother asked you not to be soft,

  she said your fragility

  would have the men running towards

  women who looked like they could unearth mountains.

  she said love was only for strong women,

  women who prayed.

  women who turned both cheeks.

  women who understood

  that men need and need and need

  and want and want and want.

  women who were ready to be
less than enough.

  she said there is nothing brave about a woman who asks of a man what

  men haven’t been made to give.

  she told you that respect was in movies and kind love was only in poems.

  and you almost believed her.

  Lover,

  bring all your honey

  and

  all your hurt.

  tell her there are goddesses in her bones

  and tales of triumph in her skin

  and that blackness

  is not a sin.

  I am mine every time.

  Trust me,

  I know how to fix myself,