Maëlle of the Bayou

 A woman who I dream of at times

They named her Maëlle,
a name with driftwood bones
and syllables borrowed from three grandmothers
one who once sang to the river in Kikongo,
one who walked barefoot through roses in Provence,
and one who stitched prayers into birchbark
beneath a sky split with eagle cries.

Her eyes --- grey, stirred with violet thunder
never blinked too fast,
as if they could slow the spin of time
if they simply watched long enough.

Maëlle was born on the edge of land and water,
where mosquitoes hum secrets
and cypress trees lean in like elders.
Her family line ran deep and crooked
a braid of color, rebellion,
and the scent of something always cooking slow.

Her cousins had hair like honey, molasses,

even one with wild orange curls,

but Maëlle’s was a nightfall tangle:

black as bayou midnight,

lit with embers of rust and hidden flame.

When the sun hit just right,

her strands flared like a warning.

They whispered about her in town.

Said she walked with shadow and bloom alike.

That she spoke to plants before she picked them.

That no sickness lasted long in her hands,

but no lie survived her gaze, either.

She wasn’t a witch.

Not in the way stories said.

She was a keeper: 

of wounds, of remedies,

of the silent language women used

when no one else would listen.

Mama taught her first

how to steep dogwood in moon water,

how to braid chamomile for night terrors,

how to hush a baby's cries

with hums older than language.

Maëlle learned to cook pain into comfort,

her hands smelling always of thyme and dusk.

She kept little bottles of balm

and bigger bottles of truth.

Men would come,

some bold, some broken.

She fed them cornbread and stared them clean through.

Some she healed.

Some she sent away.

None forgot the way her voice

curled around their doubts like smoke.

She didn’t need a ring.

The land was her legacy.

The wind was her witness.

And the moon kept time

with the thud of her heart.

Children say she walks the bayou still,

barefoot, listening to roots underground.

That when the herons cry low

and the magnolias lean back,

you can hear her

in the creak of the reeds,

in the hush of grief undone

Maëlle,

the quiet storm

who remembered everything

and chose to heal anyway.