A GIFT IN REFLECTION OF OUR CONVERSATIONS

To Shaila Small

From Emily Hooper Lansana

We begin as strangers 

We connect 

Two black women

A romantic and a realist

Reflecting on roads we are traveling

Partnership, marriage, motherhood, work,

womanhood

Dreams realized and deferred

We hold laughter and whisper regret

Welcome light

Reflecting rainbows through a prism

While wrestling shadows

We choose which rays to follow

We visit a lighthouse

A beacon in the dark

Helps us to avoid outcroppings and shoals

Trying to impede our journey or create lasting damage

Rising upward this immovable foundation of solid rock signals ongoing safe passage 

Internal, external, eternal illumination

We must also consider how to traverse fjords

Trying not to injure ourselves or others as we move from side to side

We get through rather than across

The passage is sometimes very narrow

Between rocks and hard places

We are learning to navigate narrow paths rather than the wide sea

We are still questioning, still learning, still growing,

Still here.

11/7/2020