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Yaa Asantewaa Faraji

Women's History Month Poetry: 'Diamond' by Faraji


I am the backbone of my oppressor.

I am the rib that made him and the him that made her,

I am all of it.

I am the Susan and the bee and his Anthony

I am the movement.

Be it my breath be an act of resistance.

My stand tall an act of resilience,

My breast the milk to nourish the work of life.

I am woman. I am here.

I am crass and delightful,

brutal and honest;

I am the magic in the misery.

The claim in reclamation be I who proclaim,

"My light is a star just born bright."

My body a home

My mouth a resource.

My arms the seeds to feed acceptance to the world.

I am womb inside to birth a better world.

The people in it.

Our sons and daughters to whom a better life can grow.

I am womban

Birth life unharmed.

That the womb in me never had a color, just the veins.

And the resource and the backbone for the pain.

Just the light and the spark of creation and once again:

continuation.

That you couldn't oppress the mother,

she was the earth after all —

her ocean of compassion

how you could always land alongside her.

Her mountain of strength and her fury,

a roar sprout like magma and the gems that she created. Woman staying making diamond from coal.

Stay shining like jewel from the pressure. Stay creating life of life

and more of it

from inside her mother earth.

She be all. Egg and chicken and question that brought it forth. Our life, here.

I am the time and the clock stood still.

That there was no time to reclaim because I was the time.

That the time was here, now.

Like the backbone to the world.

Moving

Moving still,

In this moment.

One life.

A movement.

A woman.

A girl.

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