Heirlooms of Womanhood - By Mbalenhle Makena

Written By: Mbalenhle Makena

Category: Poetry

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Presenting "Heirlooms of Womanhood," a compelling poetry series by Mbalenhle Makena, submitted under the Poetry category for the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. This anthology of verses captures the transformative journey of becoming a woman, weaving through threads of experiences and wisdom. In a world where self-discovery is a continual process, Makena's work resonates deeply, offering a glimpse into the profound and personal evolution of identity.

About the Work

Mbalenhle Makena's "Heirlooms of Womanhood" is a vivid exploration of personal growth and self-reflection. The poetry series delves into the nuances of womanhood, capturing the essence of life's transitions with poignant imagery and heartfelt introspection. Through a blend of elegance and raw emotion, Makena paints a canvas of resilience, hope, and empowerment, inviting readers to reflect on their own journeys.

Heirlooms of Womanhood

Original Submission by Mbalenhle Makena

Heirlooms of Womanhood

A poetry series on my experiences and wisdom as I am becoming a woman.

Heirlooms

1. A Complete Woman

2. Entry

3. The Course

4. Silly Little Things

5. Please Live

6. Putting Myself Together

7. My Understanding is Home

8. I want to feel like Spring

9. Woman, thou art ink

10. My next

A Complete Woman

I pray to feel like a complete woman

To not wonder about the crumbs of life that fell from the table of my plans

To not feel like I’ve left my potential in places I once inhabited

I pray to walk on top of all my whispers to God

I hope I recover myself from the broken telephone of the years that tell my story

I hope I can sew together sixteen year old me’s dreams and 23 year old me’s version of reality

God if you do one thing for me, don’t let me lose myself.

Please protect the whimsy I carry with me in my soul

Let me be tender and care for it

Let me take it by its hands and let it walk with me

Let it walk me into sunsets

Let it walk me into wild places and into fires

God if you let me have one thing, let it be a full life.

Let my name be child, be free, be sexy, be pure, be light,

let my name be

all that I am

Don’t let life seduce me into chopping myself up into pieces

Don’t let anything convince me to be sweet rather than be salt

and if I’m salt, let me be pink and coarse, a taste for the rare ones that know how to enjoy me

God if you let me be anything, let me be a woman who does not shrink.

Teach me to take up the whole room.

Let me be whole from every meal I cook, every nap I rest, every war I conquer, every thing I touch, every thing I ruin

Let me ruin

everything that is not true

everything that is not freeing

everything that is not good

And for every thing I’ve fed, every one I’ve touched, every life I’ve blessed

Let me pour that back into myself

Drink myself in and taste what a woman I am.

Entry

Crouching through a mistake that left you no choice but to finally will yourself through the portal of womanhood

Peacefully being woken up by what you cannot take from yesterday into tomorrow, a gentle reckoning built from violent realisations

A kick while the dog was down, the final straw until you packed what you could into a bag too small for where you were going

Entry into womanhood

The heavy handed slap across the face of oblivion, a brute force conversation with yourself to digest that it’s not what you thought it would be

Innocence, thuggishly ripped out of your hands when you least expected it, to some, that thief didn’t negotiate they simply took

And for you who negotiated, what did you give away to make such an awful deal

The baptism of the heart into war, the first act after the entry, the task for you to wash it by hand rigorously cleaning off naivety’s stains

Beating the heart into shape, the second act after the entry, a soldier must kill their tears to survive living on battle ground

Pulling the mind to bend to your willpower, the third act after the entry, you need a friend for this journey and you must build her inside of you

Teaching the spirit to not submit to anything untrue, the fourth act after the entry, you need to shape your world to be what you need from it

And the fifth act after entry, you must love. In that juicy, salacious way. Yourself, your life, your people, all the places and things that make you, you.

And when all is said and done, when you’ve turned it all inside out

Clap for yourself and laugh, you’re yet another one who made it beautiful even though it hurt.

The Course

It doesn’t move in that rigorous way you need when you realise you’ve coloured outside the lines

It collapses into your mistakes and it refuses to move in the pretence of what you wished it would be

It’s stubborn like a bull, and strong, when you grab those horns it grabs you right back

Wriggling and rinsing you out dry

It meanders into long painful pinches

Stings of pain that silently prick you in the heart

Reminders of failures, reminders of dead dreams

It sits there, large and unmoving and asks you to carry on with the heaviness

The course of womanhood

Silly little things

These silly little things are how I keep sane

When the afternoon gives arduous demands of my time reminding me I’m a woman not a silly little girl who carried flowers in her school bag

This silly sounding music is how I let the garden stay with me so I can keep my supply of that which blooms

These silly little poems catch the parts of my womanhood that fall besides you

My playfulness shudders and hides under the weight of everything I must do, must be

Call unto me you silly little things

Fall on my skin, kiss it out of the exile of womanhood unto freedom

These silly little people melt the sweet humanity you’ve been keeping in freezers of duty, they don’t care that I maintain a shape

They want me in all forms.

And those silly little places, they’ve seen more in me than what you have cared to uncover about me

This silliness is how I wrap myself in survival

To make it in this world that sees my wings but not how soft they are

I’m a woman with silly little things,

Things too small for my womanhood but big enough to swallow me whole into their world.

So if you ask, what colour is the world today I hope I don’t give you a woman’s answer, I hope I tell you that the colour of the world is unapologetically silly.

Please live

Like a chandelier swaying across the town hall.

In the cruelty of almosts

or the beauty of attempts

In between sure edges and round uncertainties

live with your cracked voice

Split it further with songs that remind you of unforgettable nights

Etch yourself into the present with a raspy cheekiness

Cry the tears

The ones that sit around your throat like their stomach’s ache with anxiety

Or the ones that fall freely, finally escaping your tunnels,

Dance

What else shall we say to God about our bodies except to make moving rhythms of thank you’s

Thank you for these hands, they’ve touched love

Thank you for these feet, they’ve stood tall

Thank you for this back, it has carried all

Expand your feel vocabulary

Learn how euphoria travels through your body, bend with the weight of your anguish,

Test how far your heart can yearn,

How far your mind can push beyond the tangible

Your living is the making.

Of grace, of truth, of God’s will.

So live.

In the simple of butter on bread, or arms around shoulders.

In the ease of your head on a pillow, or a spoonful of porridge

In the plain travels of sounds across lips and throats

In the natural of open eyes and unclosed ears

In the mechanics of limbs on ground

And then, in the certainty of rising suns and revolving moons

Don’t mistaken your presence here as trivial.

Your presence here is a meeting of soul and skin, meeting with the creator’s plan.

Here you are. So, live.

Fill your lungs with air from laughter, take in life’s cheers with wide open arms

Chuckle with silly mischief, go around the jokes with eyes full of glee

Try again with every fall, pat yourself on the back, dare yourself and live.

Putting myself together

I was open like a mountain giving way to the ocean

like the windows of a castle open in the summertime

I gave all

A fridge full of fruit, sustenance, savoury

savour me was all I kept saying

Saying it with hands that ran to hold anything you gave, sharp truths, broken parts, all your bleeding

I was saying it with sacrifices, with a spine too ready to hold your being before it knew how to hold its own

I said it loudly, tearfully, with an ache in my throat

with a whisper, with soft hands on your cheeks and kisses on everything you are

all of that and the ocean still left the space I had carved out of myself to give it way

so, I have to put it together.

I sat with myself, softly tracing my hand around the edges of what I can give figuring out why I make holes in myself to give wholeness to the world

I sat with what’s missing

the self preservation that doesn’t raise its hand to speak anymore

or the self consideration that doesn’t lift its head to look me in the eyes anymore

I sat with it all and I encircled it with the warmth of all the fires I learned to make to light the ways of others

Warmth

Was the breath I finally exhaled with gentle thoroughness

Thoroughly undressing myself of the armour of giving love

Taking in with full breath the sweetness of feeling the love that has waited for me to receive it

How sweet it sat on my tongue

A tingle in my fingers

A skip in my step

Putting myself together was an act of God

My understanding is home

I nestle myself in breadths of conversations that nobody has ever stretched themselves wide enough to have with me

My heart is the hammock I carelessly throw the weight of my mind on, it holds every curve and crevice and swings me amid air so that nothing falls to the ground

I can unravel, I can exhale I can finally unpack the suitcases and feel welcomed at home

Home is my own understanding, where rooms I never knew existed now call me into comfort

Watch me undress, hold my living and give me space

I am all the space I craved when other conversations were a horror of claustrophobia. I am the walls finally stretching, the doors finally unlocking and my chest finally at ease. The undoing of all the spaces that once left me confined.

Strangers touched me but never felt me, they watched me run but never set me free, they let me stay but they never gave me a home

I’m home. My understanding is home.

Finally my words don’t feel like I’m calling out from a cave, finally I’ve found the tunnel and the light at it’s end, finally long explanations of my soul are a journey I don’t have to travel any more

Finally the keys work and the depths of my heart are unlocked

Finally there is a friend for my soul, all in me.

I want to feel like spring

Hold the soil in your hands feel it’s moisture kind spring

Smell the fertility in the ground

Tell me your life and all the mustard dreams let me hold them seeds kind spring

Feel alive in the air of my aura

Dip your feet in the water feel it’s warmth kind spring

Then ask for more, instead of a dip, seek to dive and swim for your leisure kind spring

See the sprout of your soul as you let me into the room of your mind kind soul

Believe again, let the faith I have give yours a sunrise

Even when life is winter, let me be a spring

Let God use me as a well in the dessert

As I lead you, as children run in the fields, to the spring of fresh living waters

I am a temple for his kingdom, he has left evidence of his spring in me

I want to be the finding flowers in the afternoon kind spring

Sipping sundowners in the garden kind spring

Come see my gardens, invite me into yours

Come let’s see the father’s orchards kind spring.

I want to be the aroma of hope that leads you to come dine at the table where your feast is prepared in the presence of your enemies

Where your soul finds rest and you are led to the path of peace … and righteousness ✨

I want to feel like spring

Woman, thou art ink

Walk like a black pen inking itself on a paper

Write yourself into life legibly,

As far as black is from white, be that clear

With the freedom of a pen on a blank paper

Fill the space, do with the canvas what you see fit

And speak louder, like good handwriting and proper grammar

Do not trade your truth for euphemisms lest your truth burst out of you like leaking ink

Say what you need and want to say, what you do with yourself on the paper is entirely what you choose

Some pens have stopped wars others have healed people

Those are the fruits of the pen that kept writing

And don’t be like a pencil, those have never written revolutions

Don’t bend yourself waiting to be confirmed

Don’t ask the paper for permission

Let it deal with the reality of your ink

Write well.

Write good paragraphs, good stories, a good life.

Do it all with the confidence of ink on paper.

My next

I hope my next poems are about courage

I hope I name the collection something boisterous like “unapologetic”

And I hope I mean every syllable of the word

I hope I read these one day and I feel sure

Sure that the sun hangs in the sky because there’s something here that I can trust

I hope I hold my fearful little face with fearlessness and glee

I hope my next poems are not poems of wander but rather testimonies in complete awe of God

I hope i finally escaped my mind’s chains

I hope in the next, I am a completely free woman.

End.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, hosted by Hashtag Kalakar, celebrates the art of storytelling through diverse forms of creative expression. This esteemed platform brings together writers and poets from around the world, offering them a stage to share their unique voices. Encouraging creativity and innovation, the competition aims to foster a global community of literary enthusiasts and visionaries.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Mbalenhle Makena for sharing "Heirlooms of Womanhood" with us. This evocative poetry series stands as a testament to the beauty and complexity of the journey toward self-discovery and empowerment. Thank you, Mbalenhle, for your contribution to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, enriching the world with your words.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.