The Lion Walks Beside Me

The lion walks beside me.

Not behind me.
Not ahead of me.
Beside me.

Because power, real power,
does not need to perform an entrance.
It does not need applause,
a fog machine,
or a man in linen explaining my destiny
with suspicious confidence.

The lion knows.

He has watched me become.

Watched me walk through arduous seasons
with my lipstick intact,
my prayers unfinished,
My dignity refuses eviction.

Watched me hold my grief
like a chalice,
not because I wanted to be holy,
But because some days
There was nowhere else to put the ache.

And still,
I rose.

Not pristine.
Not docile.
Not perfectly healed
with a journal prompt and a green smoothie.

No.

I rose with incense in my hair,
salt at my threshold,
fire in my hips,
and the kind of discernment
That makes foolishness uncomfortable
when it enters the room.

The lion approved.

A low sound moved through him,
ancient and amused.

He said,
Now you remember.

And I did.

I remembered my softness.
There was never a weakness.
It was architecture.

I remembered that my body
was not a battlefield
for other people’s hunger.

I remembered that my voice,
once coerced into silence,
could become an instrument
of exquisite refusal.

I remembered that a woman
can be tender, luminous, astute,
and still look a lie in the face
without blinking.

This is what survival made possible.

A sovereign kind of beauty.
A tenacious grace.
A regal composure
that knows when to bless,
when to leave,
and when to let the ancestors
handle the rest.

There were years
When I mistook endurance
for love.

Years when I was confused about being chosen
with being cherished.

Years when I made myself
palatable, gracious, magnanimous,
while others feasted
on the parts of me
They had no capacity to honor.

The lion did not interrupt me then.

He waited.

Because some awakenings
must ripen in the blood.

Some women must walk
through the gratuitous noise,
the sanctimonious advice,
the implausible betrayals,
and the beautifully decorated traps
before they understand
That peace is not passive.

Peace has claws.

Peace has boundaries.

Peace knows how to smile
at a former version of chaos
and say,
May God be with you, beloved,
because I will not be.

That is the part
They never expect.

The holy sass.

The sacred exit.

The moment a woman stops negotiating
with anything that requires
her diminishment.

Now I walk differently.

Slowly.
Deliberately.
Adorned in my own becoming.

There is a lion at my side,
a crown in my spirit,
a river under my tongue,
and a fire in me
that no longer apologizes
for being seen.

I do not roar
for every room.

Some rooms are too small
for the sound.

Some people only understand volume,
not authority.

So I let my presence speak first.

I let my silence become lucid.

I let my eyes say,
I have survived what you cannot pronounce,
And still, I came dressed.

That is not arrogance.

That is evidence.

The lion walks beside me
because I have stopped abandoning myself
at the altar of acceptance.

Because I have learned
that intimacy without reverence
is just trespassing
with better lighting.

Because I have learned
that healing is not the erasure of pain,
But the reclamation
of every sacred room within me
that shame once tried to occupy.

I am not becoming powerful.

I am remembering
where I buried the key.

And yes,
There will always be those
Who calls a woman too much
when she is finally sufficient
unto herself.

Too intense.
Too mystical.
Too ambitious.
Too direct.
Too sensual.
Too unwilling
to make her light
more convenient
for weak eyes.

The lion laughs.

He always laughs there.

Because what they call too much,
The calls return.

What they call audacious,
He calls it accurate.

What they call difficult,
He calls for free.

So let them stare.

Let them wonder
what changed.

Let them ask
Why the air shifts
When I enter
with no announcement,
no explanation,
No need to believe.

I know what walks with me.

An ancestral courage.
A ferocious mercy.
A beauty that has been tested
and did not become cruel.

The lion walks beside me.

And when the world asks
who I think I am,
I pause.

I breathe.

I smile,
just enough.

Then I let the lion answer
in the language
beneath language:

She is the woman
who came back to herself.

And this time,
she did not come alone.

Delia-