Yemaya

I used to dream of my great escape. Wondering the day I'd walk out, the moment I’d stop responding to emotional abuse, the morning I'd stop answering the phone. Then, I woke up in a bushel of branches, creaking beneath my back; as if I had spent the whole night running.

Muscles aching from the tension, heart fluttering from the adrenaline, head pounding from cerebral memories. Boggled down by anguish, I hear the branches break and that’s when I saw her:

I saw a woman fall from the Tree of Heaven

gracefully outside my limestone window...

Her Black skin glistening from the moonset like flickering glass

Her hair full of tight orange coils, shining with sheen

Her body clinching to a green silk gown, flowing like a stream

Her body

moving in slow motion

as if she were a muse in an archived film

and as she moved with the wind

I gazed into her fore and noticed her face

she was breathtaking

lips pierced open, exhaling her erotic power

head tilt back slightly, her brow searching for the light

eyes closed shut, tears streaming down her face

she turned her head, looking at me, she smiled

an arousal of shame flooded my body from the recognition

it was as if she knew me...

and as she reached the bottom of the fall

winds thrusting her into the ocean skin

she submerged into a pool

full of daggers and knives

my eyes swelled as I watched her swim

with snags at her hems

body left with gashes and open wounds

and yet, I would watch her twirl

as if she were dancing for survival

she’d take six of those knives

guiding herself down into the seabed

My bed

where she lied next to me

but she looked at me from my own eyes

and she was still smiling

for whatever pain she had endured

was much more freeing than the pain she was escaping

and I thought to myself...

I wonder how she got up there?