TAKE THIS STAND

For Madame Abomah

There are those who measured her inches

but missed the weight of her will.

They saw six-foot-ten inches of spectacle

and none of the woman still.

They named her Abomah, like fable

plucked from Dahomey flame.

Crowned her ‘Queen of the Giants’,

yet they never asked her name.

.

Take this stand, take this gaze

Step from shadow into stage.

.

She rose from Cross Hill’s clay soil,

where freedom came late and lean,

a cook with arms of history,

elbows greased with dreams unseen.

They said: be savage,

be Dahomey,

be myth

and she said:

I’ll be more than your script.

.

Her silence bent their scripts to sorrow,

her gown stitched pain into pride.

She stood while the world made a market

of the skin she could never hide.

Posters sang of her “giantess beauty,”

but never the cost of their stare,

the nights she curled in crumpled trains,

alone with no one there.

.

Take this silk, take this chain,

Wear them both and feel no shame.

.

Ringling brass and Barnum fanfare

she strode through it all like a queen,

not monstrous, not meek, but sovereign,

her silence exact and serene.

They bought tickets to feast on her body,

but she gave them lessons in poise,

in corseted protest and choreographed calm,

she conjured power without the noise.

.

Take this bow, take this burden.

It is not you, Ella, who should be uncertain.

.

Somewhere,

between Paris and Port-au-Prince,

where segregated docks met rain,

she walked beneath her own billboard

and flinched at the print of her name.

“Amazone Noire!” they shouted in French

but her tongue told them “Ella” instead.

She listened to the myth they wrapped her in

and wore truth like a crown on her head.

.

She is gone, but not vanished,

her echo walks tall through time.

And every girl told, “You’re too much”,

now hears that echo as rhyme.

.

Take this height, take this sorrow,

Make it the grace of your tomorrow.

.

Her name was Ella.

Not freak.

Not flame.

Not relic of some jungle game.

Ella Williams.

A woman of stature in bone and breath.

A queen of stillness, defying theft.

She bore the gaze of thousands

and built herself from grace and lack,

never traded her soul for the spotlight,

never once performed ‘Black’.

.

She moved through rooms of mirrors,

where race and size were knives.

But even as they drew her outline,

she lived ten thousand lives.

She dreamed of rooms without staring.

Of quiet. Of kitchen smoke and sun.

Of a place where no one’s body

meant they had to run.

.

Take this myth, take this mourning,

Let it burn into a new morning.

.

Truth is, her body once paid the ticket.

Her beauty was once called wild.

No height ever spared her from

being looked at like a child.

But she never bowed to pity.

She never flinched in shame.

She made the freak-show stage her temple,

and held her dignity in flame.

.

So take this stand,

take it neither for giants nor ghosts.

Take it for women, those who were never hosts

even in their own skin.

For those who walked alone into the roar and stayed whole.

Take it for Ella.

And whisper her name

like a drumbeat

beneath the noise.

Ella.

Not their legend. Not their loss.

But her own hard-earned voice.