I used to think power was loud.
All teeth and noise and sharp elbows.
I stayed away.
It didn’t smell like me.
Didn’t speak like me.
Didn’t hold space for softness.
But maybe…
Maybe power is quiet sometimes.
Maybe it walks barefoot.
Maybe it sits with the baby on its lap
while rewriting the damn future.
I’ve seen what it does…
when a woman like me
decides she’s no longer a guest in her own life.
When she names what she wants
without folding herself in half to be palatable.
Power is the ability to change a life…
starting with mine.
Power is when my children
look at me and see freedom
with a face that looks like theirs.
I do not perform power.
I live it.
In the way I say no.
In the way I say yes without justifying it.
In the way I show up.
For me. For mine. For more.
I don’t owe anyone smallness.
I don’t owe the world a thank you
for surviving it.
I owe myself the whole sky. And maybe a little thunder.
Because this, this thing I carry…
it’s not ambition.
It’s memory.
It’s legacy.
It’s me, walking like I own the ground.
Because now,
I do.