Blue spirit with hair of red cosmos,
Held by a ribbon of water,
Tear stream of fuchsia.
Her heart is green geometry
Become line, become stygian edge.
Sternum a tarn, a settling of light.
Copper plated and soft,
Dimpled as the saltless sea she is born of,
Her soul flows upward
Away from the shadow
We mean to tuck in her backbone
There to nighten, to drink the color and the flight from her
Before she knows enough to call the air a limb,
And to call the limb, a wing, two,
Growing on marrow.
Tahnia Barrie is a Sierra Leonean poet and writer, currently based in her country’s capital city, Freetown. She is an alum of the 2023 WAW residency at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora. She is calling on you, dear reader, to join her in refusing and resisting the genocide of the Congolese people, the Palestinian people, and all oppressed peoples around the world. Wherever you are, get in the way however you can. We move with the Intifada to liberation and beyond. Together, we resist, resist, resist.