...AND THE QUEENS DID RULE

A hymn for the women who remembered they were never subjects.

…AND THE QUEENS DID RULE

If Buchi Emecheta would see us now,

Flying “FIRST CLASS” whilst stepping on some toes,

She'd be proud to be black and woman.

We dug deep to reach for our glory days in light,

We who used to bare children by dark,

Now made up in black,

Mourning the death of the fallen heroes.

We who were theirs to fend,

Now hold the keys to their fetters.

To serve on a bended knee, THEY WILL!

Kissing our feets and worshipping our bodies like temples.

From our nipples they would suck nectar like bugs,

Enriching our buds and causing our flowers to blossom without ceasing.

We vacated our thrones for too long,

delusion struck them to the heart like lightening,

they became Kings of their own making.

Who stated that I cannot be President but Vice?

Did they not search the Holy books?

“Go to the ants, learn from their ways”

We went to the colony of bees,

And

The

Queens

Did

Rule.

Oh Blasphemous Chauvinists and Misogynists,

“The time to favour her, yea the set time has come!”

Our source of strength is in the womaness of our stature,

luring them like kittens to the milk from our bosom,

The revolution has already begun,

The future is now and female.

© Amarachi ‘24

What Does It Mean for Women to Rule?

I wrote this poem in 2024, but reading it now, I realise I was not simply writing about women occupying positions of power. I was writing about women remembering that power was never supposed to be a strange language to us.

For so long, we have been taught to measure our progress by how close we can get to the tables men built. President, CEO, director, leader, but always with the silent question of whether we are allowed to be there. As though female ambition must first be approved before it can become legitimate.

However, I am interested in something bigger than being permitted into the room. What happens when women stop asking for permission to sit at the table and begin questioning why the table was built that way in the first place?

One fascinating thing about patriarchy: it can convince women that power looks masculine, that authority must sound like a man, that leadership becomes legitimate only when a woman has learned to perform it in ways that men recognise.

I don't want that. I want women to rule without having to become men to do it. I want softness to coexist with authority. I want femininity to exist without being treated as an unfortunate weakness that must be overcome before a woman can be taken seriously.

Maybe that is what I meant when I wrote, “We vacated our thrones for too long.”

This is not that women have always ruled perfectly, that every woman is inherently good or every man inherently oppressive. I am not interested in replacing one unquestioned hierarchy with another and calling it liberation.

I am interested in the audacity of women remembering themselves.

The audacity to imagine a world where a woman at the top is not an exception, a novelty, a token, or a “female version” of a man.

A world where she can simply be a queen and rule.