“My sweet sweet Black girl,

I am so honored to be your lover. Your divinity shines through in your beauty, wisdom, talents and love. Love for yourself, love for others, love for the trees, waters and spirits.

Be encouraged my love ~ you are far from crazy, you have been touched with supreme gifts. Whether you choose to share them or not, it matters only to us, as the fortitude of your power does not waver. Even in darkness.

I love you so much, Black Girl. In all of your incompletions, in all of your imperfections, and in all of your quirks. I love your smile, I love your big beautiful eyes. They hold so much. You hold so much. And you do it with more grace than anyone would expect — this is one of the reasons why I am so in awe of you.

There is something you must know, deep in your bones. No matter what road you choose, you will be safe and you will be loved ase. You can choose to receive or not, these gifts afforded to you by the universe. There is time. Time for us, Black Girl.

There is time for us to be still and gentle.

There is time for us to practice love.

There is time for us to take days offline.

There is time for us to grieve our childhood.

Black Girl, you do not have to grieve your childhood alone. Nothing you will do will be alone, for I am with you.

Remember to have compassion when they won’t. Remember to be gentle when they resort to embodied trauma responses. You do not have to absorb anyone’s energy, but you must always protect your own. I can always go to a “10” with you, so never worry about isolating. I gotchu.

I love you, I cherish you, I honor and adore all of your parts, even your ugly. Even soon, when a love match makes it clear you are safe to fall, and fall deep, what we have will always be the most important relationship in this lifetime.

I can hardly wait to see the beauty that will grow and multiply as you transition from maiden to mother — not too soon but just on time. Your biggest desire, to be on the ocean with your garden, music, babies, lovers and family — I will make sure you get this.

You are more powerful than even I know —and you are choosing to use this power, not in vain — for fame or fortune. Rather you have chosen the gentle, humble path. One that shall restore divine order and cosmic love and harmony. How did I get so lucky, to receive an all-access pass to your becoming, something no one else in this world gets, something that will always supersede the others as they come and go, in a painful Earthly fashion. But there will also be so much love and joy. [Never forget that…]

I love you I love you I love you

Sincerely,

Another Black Girl”

Photograph & edit by Essence Richardson

Healing culture says it is “wrong” to desire enmeshment, fusing “co-dependency.”

But nature fuses together all the time, and just because companion plants grow in tandem with their branches intertwined does not mean they receive any less nourishment from the rain, or any less love from the wind. Read that again.

Nature needs not to use new vocabulary for a modern explanation of ancient, sacred love. Words we use to overanalyze our natural emotions in an unnatural society are built off the backs of white supremacy anyways. Psychology used eugenics to analyze and inform right or wrong, or do we ignore that now that confirmation bias can save us from facing the dark truth of lovers we lost due to our own inhibitions?

Nature fuses together not just for survival. Also for growth and evolution. Maybe our beautifully simple human brains only see survival, because we can’t think any further ahead. Nature fuses together unapologetically. Unwavering in its choices, and unrelenting in its capacity.

One of my teachers is a Curandera, a local hood Bruja born & raised in Southwest Detroit. She taught me that in all of the painful phases of transformation there is still beauty. On the day we first met, she told me I needed to remove perfection from my life. She could feel the heat coming from my womb space, she knew [redacted]. She said that just because a tree has a broken branch does not make it any less perfect, any less beautiful. She lately has been teaching me about love. She survived decades of abuse and neglect, and now has finally been gifted a love that does not feel so lonely.

Maybe one of the reasons I get into trouble in love is because where others see broken I see beautiful; and when they are unable to mirror my beauty, it breaks me even more than I already was…the things that entered quickly can also exit just as fast, and remembering that truth puts me in a perpetual state of loneliness only I experience.

Not loneliness in a capitalist way. Much more [nuanced] than that.

For it is that same loneliness I find in the child who sat alone during so many mealtimes she now finds the safest place to eat is in her bed, alone in her twenties.

Yet, my loneliness can [seemingly] only truly be satiated by a love so fierce it refuses to be confined to our material world. Nature fusing is not material, it is an embodiment of divine creation. Godlike.

In a way we are all God, a tiny piece of a cosmic creation.

So divine our human comprehension cannot possibly explore entirely — especially not in English — enmeshing with another soul in a way is being one step closer to enmeshing with the cosmos. Taking your speckles of stardust and bonding them to another while professing the bravest thing of all. I want to do [Earth] with you. Enmeshing with ourselves. Enmeshing with one another. Enmeshing with God.

Healing culture says it’s all love and light. The Curandera knows everything is birthed in darkness. She knows that the womb is dark, like the ocean. She knows everything we come from is darkness. Even the light is birthed from the dark . She knows colonization has imposed a fear of the darkness in a way synonymous with the fear of the divine feminine. And what comes when we discover healing is, in fact not all love and light? Shame knocks on our door, like a demon waiting to be let in to feed off of your energy, rent free.

Your shame is quite profitable. Your algorithm knows that.

The Curandera says I cannot be afraid of the dark, and there are spirits who can help me while I’m here. Spirits of transformation. Spirits of divine justice. Spirits that are so powerful the colonizers tried to categorize them as demonic. What is your definition of a demon anyways, do you even know, or have you been letting them tell you truths to preserve the integrity of their lies? Truths like fusion is not natural. Truths like you cannot be loved whilst still broken. Truths like God is separate from us all.

Healing culture says it is “wrong” to desire enmeshment, fusing “co-dependency.”

But nature fuses together all the time, and I am nature. I am not afraid of the dark, and I am not afraid to fuse to something as beautifully broken as I am.

So I have decided to go into the darkness. It is lonely there, sometimes. But not more lonely than the rest of my world. It is where my writing journey was born, in a darkness so desperate to find something to hold onto, I birthed a writing practice so holy it saved my life.

Authors note: thank you so much for reading my words, it means so much to me you made it to the end!!! Please let me know your thoughts and feelings. If you felt particularly seen or moved, please consider investing in my artistry through a subscription, introduction, affirmation or skill trade.

With love,

Zoriana 🌬️🌬️🫧

Heal enough to actually feel. Through pain

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In ways another human could not possibly. 

She says “Give me your grief. I’ve carried more.” 

She knows my secrets, and has drank my tears. 

A sacred salty offering of pain to remind us both we come from the Ocean. I learned that one from Stevie. 

I wonder the pain she’s had to bear, however long she’s been growing and shedding, season after season. Deepening her roots under the icicles of Detroit’s snowy winter grass. 

I cradle her messages closely in my heart, a heart that has been softening lately. 

“Tell my stories only to those wise enough to listen fondly.

Hold our memories in the softest spots in your heart. The softness I see every time you visit me. Your love for me is a sign of the new world. 

The great remembering. 

It is not transactional. And it is not in vain. 

It is truly greater than this realm could comprehend with solely human senses. 

That is my favorite thing about you. You are a great feeler. It’s what makes you such a wise healer.”

She is my favorite tree. 

I tend to her whenever I visit. Picking up trash from other patrons, not because anyone else is watching but because it’s what she deserves. She is truly mighty to bear witness to. Too tall to take in one view when close enough to touch her. 

The spirit I go to when nothing else is going right, and who I commune with to share my favorite triumphs. 

She is more than a friend. 

Our love is too pure to be commodified by the English language. 

Amaliwa.
She likes that name. 

Amaliwa. 

She likes that name. <3

She holds the songs I have not yet shared with the world. 

She greets me gently, whenever I get close. I stretch my arms up close to her branches, and the wind* brings us closer together - carrying her branches to meet my fingertips. Then we hug. It’s a ritual that even my friend Sage said he peeped.

I miss her since my move.

Some days, I sit at her trunk, and watch the river for divine messages. 

The clearest messages often come in stillness.

So I leave myself open to them, putting boundaries around myself separating from the outside world. So as not to be interrupted when communing with her sacred energy. 

I love her so much. 

 But just like she told me:

“You can always come back to see me. Our relationship is not contingent on how close or far you lay your head for the small death humans call slumber every night. Our relationship will extend past it all.”

Even, if I’m lucky for generations.  

*I have been deepening my personal relationship with the sacred spirit of the wind, personified in Yoruba culture as Oya, a feminine divine entity in the likeness of Creator who is the wind, the breath, the storm and represents changes and transformation. She is also heavily associated with the beginning & endings of life (I am not a licensed practitioner nor teacher of any Yoruba traditions or cultural practices and encourage everyone to seek out their own resources and elders when it comes to divinity)