The first joyful mystery, The Announcement:

 “And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth” 

What are the words you do not yet have?

What do you need to say?

What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?

They say to wake up in the world

Is to be handed beauty blade first

“No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness.”

Jo wo ma i lo oh, jo wo ma i lo se

Motherhood, womanhood, the mechanization of love, the inexplicable brutality of having ‘your heart live in someone else’s

She joked that the way their mother forgot things she might be susceptible to Alzheimer’s when she’s older. But her sister didn’t laugh,
“What do you mean by that? Losing memory is a very serious thing, don’t say that. Imagine, she will forget all the suffering she caused us.”

My father moved patiently cupping his hands beneath his chin, kneeling on a janamaz. Bending there with his whole form marbled in light, he looked like a photograph of a famous ghost. I ached to be so beautiful.

What are the words you do not yet have?
What do you need to say?
What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?

My mother brands me with her signature iron that spells “mothers never hurt their children”, at my nostril gates, hairs question the smell of singed skin.

Everyone dies. Sometimes a beloved dies, and sometimes love.

But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!

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Words:

• The Catholic Church/ The Bible book of Luke 1:26 (KJV)
• Audre Lorde, from The Transformation of Silence
• Joshua Segun-Lean, from Here, I appear softly new
• Adrienne Rich, from Blood, Bread and Poetry
• Lijadu Sisters, from Come Home
• Ariana Harwicz, from Die, My Love
• an anonymous tinyletter
• Kaveh Akbar, from Learning to Pray
• Audre Lorde, from The Transformation of Silence
• August Azikiwe, tumblr
• Sharon Olds, from A Stag’s Leap)
• Andre Aciman, from Call Me By Your Name

Images:

• Michael Andrews, Melanie and me swimming, 1978-79
• Along Atem, A Weeping Marian Apparition (Our Lady of La Salette), 2016
• New Yorker cartoon
• Nydia Blas, from The Girls Who Spun Gold, 2016
• Deana Lawson, Sons of Cush, 2016
• Robin Maddock, from work in progress on England
• Lucian Freud, Sleeping by the Lion Carpet, 1996
• Lebohang Kganye, ‘Ke Dutse pela dipalesa II’ from Ke Lefa Laka, 2013
• Ngozi Ezeonu, from Crying Mother
• Kevin Osepa, from Mester Blousé
• Screenshot from Tumblr
• Adaeze Ihebom, from Women of the East (a project on widows)

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Curated by @immaculataabba // immaculataabba