“Bloodline of the Sacred Whore”

— for the daughter who remembers her own name

I am the cut from the cloth of intergenerational trauma,
a manifestation of dormant desires of resistance,
thousands of years in the making—
a temple rebuilt from the bones of those burned
for carrying too much body,
too much knowing,
too much god in their hips.

I descend from the sacred whore,
whose moans were prayers,
whose thighs were altars,
whose touch conjured rain and revelation.

She was silenced by scripture,
erased from the stone,
yet I carry her name in the arch of my spine.

I was born in the bloodline of Magdalene and Lilith,
milk-fed on myths twisted into shame.
They called her harlot—
but she was holy,
her sweat anointing kings,
her breath resurrecting men too dead to remember their names.

My mother,
her mouth full of shame,
wrapped my budding joy in disapproval.
She taught me to fear my own breasts,
my own laugh,
my own wanting.
And I swallowed that shame
until it lived in my gut like a stone.
But even stones can split in heat—
and I burned.

I descend from the sacred whore—
not the slur, but the sanctified:
the woman who knew god by touch,
unlearning every lie
about who I was supposed to be and why.
I pressed my body into truth
and let it teach me how to live.
They called it rebellion.
But it was remembrance.

My body remembers what they tried to bury:
how divinity enters through flesh,
how creation is not sterile,
but wet, aching, pulsating with wild truth.
I am that truth,
raw and luminous,
smeared in lipstick like battle paint.

In my lineage, desire is not sin,
but spell.
My grandmothers wore their pleasure like crowns
until it was ripped from them
by men too terrified to kneel.
They came with crosses, with laws,
with guilt carved like commandments—
but the sacred whore cannot be crucified.
She only transforms.

Let no one tell me my power must hide.
I wear it like scent,
like silk,
like vengeance.

I am not the shame they passed down—
I am the fire that remembers
what it is to be sacred
and whole
and wild
and holy.

Resistance lives in how I refuse erasure:
not by rage alone,
but by joy.
By pleasure.
By naming myself—fully.
Not half, not white, not ashamed.
But Black, bodied, brilliant,
descendant of those who survived
so I could choose to live free.

I do not ask for approval anymore.
I am not here to be palatable,
to fit neatly inside anyone’s shame.
I am the one who prays naked,
laughs loudly,
and kisses with my whole mouth.

I am the lineage returned to itself.
I am the sacred whore, resurrected.
I am the blood that refuses to dilute.
I am the daughter who walked back into her body
and said: this is holy ground.