Rashida James Saadiya
I saw you once in a prayer. Some call them dreams.
The world was asleep, the birds were there, watched as you opened your chest.
Held what was broken, then let it fall to the bottom of the ocean.
The sky was silent. So, the birds began to sing, “nothing is ever lost, let the water carry it home.”
I gathered all the words I ever needed, placed them gently inside your ear. We waited together for the sky to open. To return your heart as if it were a star that somehow fell from heaven. Even a broken thing is difficult to let go of, but you did.
Once I was a heart that almost died, but a circle of women saved me.
Women as dark as midnight with dreams under their skin. Women like us.
Wrapped ayats around my wounds.
Held me until the ache died. Until the pain went away.
I want to say I healed quickly, but there is no wisdom in telling lies.
I held on tightly to the broken pieces.
Traveling back and forth between heartache and what should have been.
At night the women would whisper
“How noble to lay your body down.
To eat your grief in silence. But an open wound can only fester.
Place your hands where it hurts. Pull the ache from your bones.
Learn how to stitch yourself back together. Learn when to walk and when to fly away.”
I want to tell you what I learned.
Give you the seeds carried in between the gap of my teeth.
I want to plant something beautiful inside your chest.
Listen to me; water holds no footprints, no records of those who refused to drown. This does not mean the women before you did not teach themselves to walk across the ocean. Or that they have not left a path for you to discover what it means to be free.
Find the women who carry medicine and testimony on their tongues. Sermons and cowries braided into their hair—revelation written across their palms. Women who will love you in a dialect you can understand. Those who will walk with you until you’re whole, again.
Rashida James-Saadiya is a writer and cultural educator, utilizing storytelling as a lens to explore embodied knowledge and community care. Her latest project, "Betraying the Spectacle," explores the constructs of race and the role of cultural memory and placemaking amongst Black Muslim women in the American South. Her creative work has appeared in "Hand to Hand: Poets Respond to Race," Voyages Africana Journal, "Kaleidoscope: Contemporary Muslim Voices," and Decomp, a multimedia journal in partnership with the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia.
