My Tongue Is a Weapon, My Womb Is a War Drum

My Tongue Is a Weapon, My Womb Is a War Drum

by Tenisha Tyler

My tongue is a weapon,

My womb is a war drum.

Every syllable I speak

Beats back a system that numbs.

Can you hear me?

Can you feel me?

This ain’t no whisper in the wind,

It’s the echo of a million mothers

Who don't get to tuck their babies in.

See…

We’ve been birthing brilliance

In the midst of broken systems,

Rocking the cradle

While dodging the statistics that lists us

As “less likely to live,”

As if breath and blessing

Aren't both our birthright.

But I stand here tonight,

Unbowed, unbroken, and unbought.

Because my body been a battlefield,

Yet still I rise.

They count us in threes and fives,

But they can’t quantify our lives.

3 to 5 times more likely to die, they say

But numbers don’t cry.

Numbers don’t bleed.

Numbers don’t breastfeed through grief.

Numbers don’t whisper prayers over bassinets

Begging the ancestors,

“Please, let this one breathe.”

My womb isn’t just a wound site,

It’s a war drum.

It beats out the rhythm of survival,

Boom

 for the mother they ignored.

Boom 

for the sister who warned,

And still got silenced.

Boom 

for the baby born too soon,

The father who grieved alone,

And the village that mourned.

This isn’t biology, baby 

This is theology in motion.

God dipped her hands in melanin

And made devotion.

And though they write reports,

And hold their conferences and think tanks,

We’ve been holding hearts

And closing ranks.

It’s racism, it’s bias, it’s blood.

It’s centuries of mistrust

Dressed in sterile gloves.

Hospitals built on hush tones

And half-listened pain.

They call it implicit bias

I call it a modern chain.

But my tongue is a weapon.

And I wield it like a sword.

My ancestors hum through my veins

And their stories are my Lord.

I speak for the mothers who didn’t make it home,

For the ones told their pain was “normal.”

For the women who bled,

Who begged,

Who broke,

Who rose again, immortal.

We've been birthing legacies

Since the Middle Passage,

Still managing to smile

While the world takes our magic.

Still nursing nations

That forget our names,

Still teaching love

While they legislate blame.

But I have news for you:

We aren’t statistics.

We are sacred.

We are not fragile.

We fabled.

We divine design,

Unmistakable in our shine 

And the drum inside me reminds me

That every contraction,

Every tear,

Every moan

Is a war cry that says:

We will make it home.

So I speak 

Not softly,

But sacredly.

Not as data,

But destiny.

Because my tongue is a weapon,

And my womb is a war drum.

And I will beat it

Until the world remembers

That Black mothers

Are not meant to become martyrs

We are meant

To become monuments.