To Tend To Heal

 

I re-lived when they spewed daggers into my skin

and then again when I teased the openings,

to decor the cavities when love grew the dreaded wings of Icarus

Still

my throat calluses trying to rectify words never taught

waiting to be embroidered

adorned with self-affirmations

lining my neck with declarations worth

You taught me the jargon of my black skin

carving your tongue to give way for my quiet trill

You taught me tugging my cheeks and lifting my tongue

to cloak it with longing of oooooo and aaaaahs

by dispelling your own melody and rehearsing mine

You reconciled the kneading torment by pleading the eulogy of Dido

to free me from lamentations buried in my blazing skin

urging the silence

urging me to pirouette and tremble to every crescendo

welding my knees deeper into everything you say I am

release that ode of sacrifice

and say

I am loved

I am yours

Love is mine

I will crane my ears to your

adagio

trickle knowing

your song will be ready to

To tend

To heal me

 
 

Kaila Cherry is a 23 year old filmmaker and writer based in Oakland, California. Currently a senior Cinema major at San Francisco State University, Kaila’s work explores the uncertainty of identity formation and the difficult journey towards self-actualization through the avenues of love, friendship, family, and other faucets that inform the reality of ourselves. Kaila Cherry’s films have been featured in the We, As Ourselves campaign sponsored by Time’s Up and Me Too (2021), the debut run of the Oakland based AfroKin Film Fest (2020), UC Berkeley’s Multicultural Community Center Black Joy Showcase 2020), Megazine Issue 4 (2019), and earned her the Herb Alpert Emerging Young Artist Scholarship (2017). She likes the fact that her last name is a fruit because she knows she will never get confused for someone else.

Deborah Misaulany Kargbo is a writer from Leicester, England. She studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with the Morehead-Cain scholarship. She is passionate about entwining Film X Poetry and creating something powerful and moving through these two mediums.