What Grounds Us Is Not Weight

My roots begin in Mississippi,

beneath a magnolia tree older than any scripture I was raised on.

The women in my family say it remembers everything—

birth cries, storm winds, secrets buried in coffee tins.

They called it the first mother, the one who held us

before the world learned our names.

My branches rise from her shadow, carrying

the scent of all those women who bloomed

even when the soil turned cruel.

Women who prayed with their whole bodies,

taught me the earth remembers every foot that crosses it,

that what grounds us is not weight but witness.

You can’t tell me the umbrella magnolia branches

don’t stretch out like locs—wild, Medusa-limbed and unruly.

But they know the name of every petal,

every blade they touch with ancient certainty.

It’s okay to get close, to lean in, to stay awhile—

I promise you will not turn to stone.

You can rest here, even when your body insists on moving.

I wonder how long it took the bark to twist and morph

into a shape worth remembering,

to line the street with sisters whose crooked fingers

still scare children and crows alike,

shadows the wind refuses to forget.

But even now, with frost outside, a bud is forming

waiting to be just what it ought to be,

twisted and hard to turn away from.

They say the shaping comes from wind stress,

but my aunties swore the leaves, steeped in boiling water,

could pull the storm back from the bones.

I believe my ancestors sat beneath magnolia trees,

listening to the wind, watching the rain fall,

falling in love with the sound of humming

a hymn rising from root and branch,

carrying us forward long before we learned to stand,

their breath woven into the bark.

At dusk, when the sky folds itself into violet, I see them—

the women who came before me, moonlight in their dresses,

petals gathered in their open hands.

Their laughter drifting through the air like pollen.

They don’t speak, but their chant is unmistakable:

Grow, girl, past everything that tried to break you.

Grow into the mouth of tomorrow

like you were born knowing how to rise.

And for a moment, the whole world softens

a place where past and future breathe together.

Now, when I sit, the magnolia wraps her arms

around my shoulders, like she has been saving a place for me.

Every branch becomes a familiar embrace I once leaned into,

every petal carries the breath of a praying woman.

In the curl of its limbs, I feel the women I come from

root and bloom, shadow and shelter—

their voices humming through the bark,

calling me home.