I Say These Things To Myself

By Linathi Makanda

Now that you are coming of age, stepping into healing, how will you address yourself? What hand will you extend to your inner child and which parts of them are you inviting to dine with the woman you are now?

I Say These Things To Myself is an embodiment of freedom, taking back and redefining things taken away from you, walking a journey where you find and hold your own hand and harnessing a softness for the self like no other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odyssey Books
• Release date: May 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922311504

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title

Copyright © Linathi Makanda 2022

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Published by Ensorcellia,

an imprint of Odyssey Books, in 2022

www.odysseybooks.com.au

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

ISBN: 978-1922311498 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1922311504 (ebook)

Cover design: Kodzo Dzansi

The Dinner Table

The candles are lit

Flickering, as if there were a presence nearer than your own.

A casserole fills the room

A rich smell like new beginnings, like cholent.

There is wine by the gallon

Flowers bloom from within.

White linen dress draping your skin

A halo of hair covering your head

Your scent, timeless.

You are chanting an incantation

"I am plenty.

Plenty is in me"

Tonight, it is the last supper

And the very first.

You are giving into the self

You are reborn.

There is love

There is glory

There is God.

How does it feel?

To arrive

You are finally seated on both ends, dining with yourself.

mind

Defining Fragility

We are living in a time of things loud enough to be felt.

There will be no part of us that scratches to be strong when we do not have to be.

Our softness will outlive us.

It will