Honeycomb Beauty

Now Momma..

she was a different kind of spell.

Fairer than the rest of us,

with skin kissed by cane sugar

and eyes like turquoise stones

set deep in a velvet creek.

Her hair was chestnut rain,

falling in soft waves down her back,

smelling always of vetiver and crushed peaches.

Men saw her coming

and forgot what they were saying mid-sentence.

Women trusted her .... until they didn’t.

She moved through a room like a perfume

you weren’t supposed to want,

but followed anyway.

Grandmama Mama said,

“She got too much breeze in her hips

and light in her laugh..

she gone break hearts without knowing she touched them.”

Momma knew how to tilt her head just so,

how to feign ignorance

while memorizing every exit.

She could barter in French,

bargain in Choctaw,

and bless you in broken Spanish

with a twist of her smile.

But don’t be fooled.

She carried steel beneath that silk.

A knife tucked in her boot,

a cure hidden in her bodice.

She didn’t fight loud.

She stopped fights...with a look,

with a whisper that made grown men forget

what they were angry about.

She learned the healing ways too,

but her gift wasn’t herbs..

it was reading people.

Knew what they feared,

what they longed for,

what they couldn't say out loud.

She taught Maëlle grace without begging,

and vengeance without mess.

Said, “Walk pretty, child,

but keep something sharp stitched into your shadow.”

She never spoke ill of her mother,

but sometimes you’d see her staring long

into the steam rising from her tea,

and you’d wonder what price she paid

to become the woman they didn’t dare cross..

the one with a laugh too golden

to be entirely safe.