Crowned Poem by Henrietta Ezegbe

A shift.
Not in texture.
In gaze.

At the limit.
With rulers
and charts
and careful comparison.

Done
with manageable.
With professional.
With almost.

Her coils do not loosen
for comfort.
They gather.

Dense as galaxies.
Tight as breath before speech.
Each strand an archive
written in spirals.

They called it difficult
because it would not fall.
Unruly
because it would not bow.

The room had been balanced
on her adjustment
for too long.

Heat rising from irons.
Chemicals sweet as surrender.
Silence pressed flat
at the roots.

Containment did not make her small.
It made her exact.

Shrinkage,
a law of distance.
The closer you come
the more you see.
The more you see
the more there is.

She steps into full light.

Now they notice
how light does not pass through.
It rests at the surface.
Learns the curve.
Crowns.

Her yes and no
returned to their owners.
No apology
stitched into the parting.

The magic was never elsewhere.
Not in looseness.
Not in length that swings.
Not in the illusion of ease.

It lived in the spiral.
In the refusal to descend.
In architecture lifting skyward,
rooted and rising at once.

She is not becoming natural.
She is nature.
Unlicensed.
Unreduced.

Not separate from the crown.
The crown not separate from her.

They mistook narrowness for order.
Softness for beauty.

Now she blooms.
Not straighter.
Not tamed.
Unmistakable.

Her gravity
requires no smoothing.
No heat.
No permission.

The world,
accustomed to resting
on her alteration,
tilts again.

Let it learn its balance.

She refuses
to shrink
for it.

Crowned.