Goddess, Shinning In All us, luminously

Greetings, Lakshmi,
radiant at the threshold,
lotus-borne and resplendent.

Greetings, Ezili,
rosewater, ache, silk, and sacred discernment.

Greetings, Oshun,
honeyed river,
allure with a spine.

Greetings, Ishtar,
star-crowned, audacious,
sovereign in love, war, and return.

Greetings, Sekhmet,
lioness flame,
incandescent, formidable, holy.

Greetings, Hathor,
mirror, music, milk, and morning.

Greetings, Ix Chel,
moon-mother, weaver of waters,
wounds, wisdom, and medicine.

Greetings to every goddess I honor,
named and unnamed,
ancient and immediate,
hidden in salt, smoke, silk, blood, laughter,
candlelight, bathwater, and the quiet moment
before a woman remembers who she is.

I know you.

I know you in my pose.
I know you in my intuition.
I know you in my tenderness
and in the lucid authority of my boundaries.

I am you.
You are me.

That is the beauty of being a woman:
We are never singular.

We are altar and answer.
Velvet and thunder.
Mercy and mandate.
River and flame.
Soft enough to bless the room,
sovereign enough to leave it.

We carry memory because we are the archive.
We carry magic because we are the passage.
We carry fire because someone had to.

So when I offer greetings to the goddesses,
I am not summoning them from afar.

I am greeting the mirror.
I am opening the door.
I am saying:

Yes.
I recognize you.

Come closer.

We have honey to taste,
truth to tell,
empires to revise,
and ourselves to adore
without apology.

Greetings, my many names.

I am here.

And this time,
I am not whispering.

-Sherley