Filled with water are the bottom of my eyelids
but I’m doing that fanning thing to keep the flow of tears
from rolling down my cheeks. I’m not weak.
I speak…loud enough to be heard by the one who chooses
to hear me. I know God is listening.
My tears are my strength; you envy me for what I’m not afraid to do
because I embrace my fate
for God has already stamped my date.
I let go and let Him, never holding back what’s within
that is me.
Who am I to decide what I should be?
Look at your reflection
before you dare to consider the inspection
that you will conduct of me.
You don’t know the half of my rites of passage that has led me to be…
in front of you. I once knew…a man who never told the truth
and when he tried not to lie he would cry inside
and die would his spirit 99 times.
Don’t hold me back from being what I naturally am.
Instead, understand that a woman is a woman and a man is a man.
Yet, do see me in you, as we were created by the same hands.
Forget yesterday and live today, stop reflecting on past faults.
When Lot’s wife looked back, she turned into a pillar of salt!
I see beauty, I see change, I see growth and I see pain.
I see a woman of valor who has very much to gain.
If you never have known love or inhabited its space,
it’s the tears of a woman whose heart has been misplaced.
If you’ve seen her, then you have seen yourself….
Reflections…

Leslie Saint-Julien