In Beloved, Toni Morrison writes, “There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker.” Women know. We know. Like some kind of gnarled up fist clawing through black earth, clawing at the light, primal, reaching at the light. We sway, we know. I have been so wrong. I was so wrong. I know.

Maizie, “child of light; pearl.” 

Tyler Perry cast perfectly when having Loretta Devine play lady in green in the brilliant, most perfect book For Colored Girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by the inimitable Ntozake Shange: “somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff / & i was standin / there/ lookin at myself/ the whole time / & it wasn’t a spirit took my stuff/ waz a man whose / ego walked round like Rodan’s shadow/ was a man faster / n my innocence/ waz a lover/ i made too much / room for/ almost run off wit alla my stuff/”.  

You have to stop and say what is it in me that is allowing this? You have to look at yourself in this.

 Since Tina Turner died in ‘23, I sing to her, big wheel keep on turning. Proud Maizie keep on burning. And we rolling. Rolling. Rolling. Rolling. Rolling on a river.

I didn’t understand cruelty and violence. I didn’t understand so many men were like this. They, so many, are like this. I didn’t see it coming for me. I never saw it for myself. I wouldn’t have it for her. I won’t have her seeing me like that. I won’t raise her seeing that. I won’t let it happen to her.

I can’t read Lynda Hull’s “Chiffon” without crying. We have history. The girls in the poem are on a rooftop in Jersey “Stop in the Name of Love”; there is violence, angry sky, angry heat, a world falling apart around them. They’re little girls. Hull writes, “Small hand held against the flood / of everything to come, the savage drifting years. / I’m a lucky bitch. Engulfed in the decade’s riotous / swells, that lovely gesture, the dress, plumage / electrifying the fluid force of that young body. / She was gang-raped later that year. The rest, / as they say, is history. History.” I thought I had it down, the savage drifting years understood, the heart broken, the heart lonely. I thought I knew, when going back, “the heart surprised, dark and bitter.” Maizie, what I am saying is there are cycles, patterns, whatever you will, and it bears repeating. History. It can come back again. Think it o-o-ver.

Shange writes, “I waz missin something / something so important / somethin promised / a layin on of hands / fingers near my forehead…i waz missin something … the holiness of myself released.” How did I let this happen? Some kind of father-sized hole configured, needing filling; it bears repeating, history. 

You are perfect, your skin, your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your heart, your mouth saying “hat” or “ice”, the vowels therein your 17 month old mouth. I’ve been talking to you my whole adult life. You have dinosaur teeth and love tractors. You are the best patched through of all of us. Stevie Nicks sings in Gypsy, “I have no fear / have only love / and if I was a child / and the child was enough / enough for me to love / enough to love.” I think that’s it. Maya said it, we are never not innocent shy magnolias, no matter our age. I never got myself right from it. History. So many tatters I can’t begin to say—it is legions of mothers handholding daughters off to school, school shoes, decades, generations, fly. “She is dancing away from you now. She is just a wish / she was just a wish / and her memory is all that’s left for you now / you see your gypsy, oh /you see your gypsy”. You’ve got to find yourself. You’ve got to rock yourself in it.

Maizie, you are here. You are the center. I am lifting you up from the wreckage, all the ugly stuff I don’t want you to be apart of.