Valentines: “Petition” by Shakeema Smalls

Petition

god loves each of us as if there were only one of us
Saint Augustine

When I was born, they covered my eyes and washed my feet like a dead man. It was here I grew into my first rites as a wild garden, gnashing girl. My mama told me to pray. My auntie taught me to work. Said if I didn’t pray, I’d die reciting war songs. Said if I don’t work, I better find something that do. I’d run through the field overgrown with wild lettuce, seeds floating past my eyes, and wait for them to close the doors to the city. It’d be here that I could be set free, lips pressed to the soil, doing what only prayers could. Here I’d learn the secret languages of my grandmother’s hands, of the smells of food lines wrapped around the block. White Diamonds and 11 am coffee drippings on the burners at the corner deli. I stood in line while church mothers dressed in white from doily to pantyhose packed brown bags for our winter pantry. They filled our laundry bags with bread, sweet milk, chicken, and raisins. No one knew the law nor the debt, but they fed us anyway. Their religiosity sung through our preservation. They would pray over my feral self, my guts hot and sanctified. The tradition of my cosmic body; an outer star at the peak of my brow, celestial daisies on my lips. 

About Shakeema Smalls

Shakeema Smalls is from Georgetown, South Carolina. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets including Blackberry: A Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, The Fem, The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Radius Lit, Free Black Space, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, and Rigorous, among others. She was a Tin House 2022 Winter Workshop participant and is a PEN 2022 Emerging Voices Fellow.