Queens like us speak a different dialect.
Queens like us who were once princesses
tiptoeing, trying not to show our scars
we would gather our hurts,
crying our pain into jars we kept hidden in our souls
we were princesses who never cared for barbies
when our thighs hurt, we would blame self
wrapping ourselves in shadows,
we spoke louder, trying to block the demons from whispering
we studied harder, since books provided solitude
we were too dark to be loved.
we were too big to be touched.
we were too much. we were “weird”
But, Princesses like us
slowly became Queens
scars like souvenirs lined the inside of our bodies
we were battered but not broken
we began to speak a different language
we began to speak a different dialect only Queens would understand
we spoke with love
we slowly forgave selves
we began to love others with no apologies.
Queens like us speak a different dialect
of hope
of love
of peace
as we unwrap the darkness,
kissing our souls.
Olanne.
Yesterday went with you.
Yesterday, i peeled you off my skin
i scrubbed your words off my spirit
and watched my soul glow again.
Olanne.
I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.