Grace

I wish I had more…Grace.

I see the embodiment of “Grace” as when a Black woman walks into a room

and we are captured by the energy that they exude

I think “ That cannot be me”

I can’t look away because my eyes are fixed on their face

Which no doubt houses eyes that cannot un-see the darkest of days

and yet they glow.

They glow like the freshly polished brass skin of a saxophone

A Black woman is the symbol of soul

They are like the smoothest of jazz

How could I also play this music?

How can my fingers that tremble under the smallest of pressures

Ever hold steady the instrument that makes others move?

Makes others feel?

How can I compose rhythms that vibrate through the bones of people who have forgotten how to dance and yet: here they do in front of her?

How can I have the type of grace that attracts people to me

The way so many other’s have drawn and filled me in.

like a child who uses all the colours at once?

I’ve seen Black women who’s smiles carry forgiveness

Their eyes cry sunshine

and their hearts bleed for the future

and I feel I am hollow

My soul echos a sound that makes my own ears ache

I don’t have that grace.

I fear that the hope my mother saw in me was misplaced

The respect my younger sister has for me will leave a distaste

when they see who I really am.

I wish I had the grace to say that

I am okay that the insufficiency that I have placed on myself because one day it may fade

That I will one day become the woman who inspires another woman

to take the stage.

The grace to pick myself up and brush away the dust that has settled around me

To emerge from my own emotional grave like the phoenix

whose flames light their way through the skies of life

While they guide anyone else that happens to see her and they think:

“I want to go there.”

When they place their hopes in that light and know she will take care of their dreams I want the grace to be a dream keeper.

Holding your visions of a better tomorrow and mean it when I say “Do not fear.”

I wish I did not fear better days as I see myself falling from the very grace I crave before I have the the chance to taste its sweet gifts.

So when I say that I lack grace it is not because I believe other Black women do not stumble,

it is not because I believe that they have never been grounded

because I see they way they have fought to rise.

When I say I wish I had grace

It means I wish I would hold myself with a little more care

Forgive myself -while giving myself a little more space to make mistakes.