5/24/2026

A quick shoutout to those of you who get my sense of humor, but also know how very serious I am in pretty much everything. I have never wished to be anyone else, not even as a young person, and I will never be without passion, in love, work, or play. 

This is me: dig it, or ditch, but never try to flatten me out for your ego. I don’t want to “fit” inside your little world. I am the Empress of the Universe, now and forever more.

And as my birthday gift to you, here is a poem by the amazing Maria Hamilton Abegunde that was partially inspired by, and dedicated to me:

This poem is for Iya Dr. Anjana Mebane (Meh!Ben)-Cruz, now retired, who was the first “Afra-Amer-Indian” woman to receive a Ph.D. in Anthropology at University of Virginia for her ground-breaking research on people of Native and African American ancestry. 

The poem’s first line is from her, after a conversation we had one day about our current political, social, and historical moment.

When I called her to read the poem as a surprise, she shared with me how her elders – Native American and pan-African – told her as a child she was a Star, and that we, Africans, came from the stars.

 

“(re)VISION: Through Fracture, Focus. Through Vision, Freedom.

Part 1

We have been here before:

The death of Empires that resist

Our Brilliance

​​Beauty

​​​Being

​​​​Black.

Their resistance means

the world will break.

Not because we fight,

Or because we “told you so”.

No, the world will break because 

bit-by-bit even the Dark knows the truth:

The Moon depends on the Sun to be seen.

The death of a Star births new Worlds.

 

Part 2

Yes, it is true: Stars breathe.

They pulsate, gather every molecule 

they can before their final exhale explodes

into helium, carbon, calcium, and iron –

Food for an expanding universe.

 

That starlight in the sky you see

Is already 50,000 years old.

You cannot stop a Star from shining. 

Even after its death, you cannot unsee

A Star’s only purpose: to be free.

 

But, did you know?

Empires are Cannibal Galaxies

Incapable of understanding why Stars 

Do not consume each other. 

Unlike Empires, when Stars die, 

They release all their energy to feed whole worlds.

They gather to witness their own re/birthing 

into something unknown.

As they are becoming they never forget who they are.

 

Part 3

We are the Stars.

We are the light that emanates from their rays

We are the rays that are vibrations

That turn into sound

And we are the sound

That hums life into being.

 

Cannibal Galaxies would rather die

Than admit that they need us, want us,

for how we know what we know.

This scares them.

And, we know that type of fear

Leads to insatiable lust for universes.

 

Empires will never tell us that they regret choosing

Dorian Gray’s Mirror, and that is why they

Gaze at us with such hunger.

Their own image reminds them

That rot begins at the core.

 

Part 4

On the other hand,

“We Who Believe in Freedom”

Have chosen Osun’s Mirror.

And, in the Great Mother’s view we see

This truth: 

We are memory keepers. 

We cannot die.

 

We  know how this story ends.

We have seen the future because we are living it

And because you will live the future 

That is not ours to dream.

Our choices have always been to “Be like Water”.

That is, we choose to love all forms of life

In their changing same

Multi-dimensionalities, textures, and tones.

 

Part 5

How the story could have gone.

Could go still.

Stars fall to Earth 

And decide to stay.

We fall in love with our own magnificence.

 

We love us:

Something in the way we move,

Something in the way our photo-spheres reflect

The truth of who we are:

Imperfect plasmas who survived

Gravitational collapse

And breaches in time and space

That will never be sutured.

 

We love each other so much,

That we agree to never leave each other alone, or empty.

We know that the Cosmos is larger than any galaxy.

And, so we choose, every moment to expand

Until the only thing of us that remains

is Breath