I Am More

I am more than my skin,

More than this melanin that defies the sun,

More than this pigment that speaks of magic, mayhem and oppression,

That sings of a people lost in the waters, lost in the fields.

I am more.

I am more than my hair,

More than this stringy mass of curls that refuses to bow to acids,

More than this untamed mane that closes schools and offices,

More than this banner of fear and violence.

I am more.

I am more than my curves,

More than this secret language of fetishization

More than the obsession with black exoticism

Which sees my sisters traded to Italy.

More than the savagery that paraded Baartman,

More than the evil that isolated Truganini and killed her people.

I am more.

I am my grandmother’s wrinkles

I am my grandmother’s wishes.

I am the dream that my grandmother had as she trekked through Nigeria’s forgotten pathways

I am my mother’s aspirations

I am my mother’s ambitions

I am the song that my mother sang on the banks of a faraway river.

I am the birth of yesterday’s visions,

I am tomorrow

I am today.

I am the future, the present and the past.

And so are we all.

We are Black women,

We are more.