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Then, there was the little girl in the Ninth Ward with a haint latched onto her back. It was a restless malicious ghost. There’d been no spells or powders I could use.

I’d had to sing the dead thing off her small shoulders, coax it into a mason jar, and bury it under a crossroads before sunrise.

And then there was the one I did not heal.

Sadness hit me.

My grandmother had a stroke. I sat beside that hospital bed for three days with every root, every prayer, every oil I owned. My hands worked until my palms bled. And still she left me on a Tuesday afternoon while I was down the hall getting coffee.

Aunt Delphine had told me later that some souls choose their own crossing, and no witch alive could hold them past the door to God.

I believed her, but it didn’t stop the ache in my chest that remained there for years.

Meanwhile, this creature at the shrine had done what all those other beings couldn’t. It had called to something inside me without making a sound.

No need to think about it too hard. Japan’s magic is just. . .older in ways I don’t even know how to measure.

It clung to the mountains. It whispered beneath rivers. It slept inside weathered stones and watched from shrines squeezed between steel buildings.

Kyoto’s spirits lingered beside vending machines. Ancestors crossed busy streets. Protective symbols glowed above doorways after the sun went down.

Granted. . .my magic loved it. My power had been restless since my arrival. It stretched farther. It burned brighter. It noticed everything.

In fact. . .I wondered how other Black women felt when they traveled here.

I bet they all feel the spiritual energy.

People used the catchphrase Black Girl Magic all the time. They printed it across T-shirts and coffee mugs.

But the phrase held a truth that non-magic users did not understand.

All Black women truly carried magic. Some women knew how to reach it. Some sensed it but never gave it a name. Others called it instinct, discernment, creativity, resilience, or faith.

But it was magic all the same.

It was the reason we could enter a room and recognize one another’s discomfort without exchanging a word.

It was how a look passed between two Black women could hold a warning, a joke, a question, and an entire escape plan.

Our magic lived in the hands that braided hair on front porches and in kitchens. It simmered in cast-iron pots.

Black women had used that power to survive slavery, segregation, medical cruelty, stolen children, stolen work, stolen beauty, and centuries of being told that our strength made us undeserving of softness.

We had survived racism that wanted us frightened and sexism that demanded our silence.

Then we had taken what was meant to destroy us and created culture from the remains.

The bones of America rested upon Black women’s magic.

The bite pulsed beneath the layers of cloth, almost as if it agreed.

There was an old Yoruba tale that explained how Black women got their magic.

When the supreme being, Olodumare sent seventeen divine spirits to shape the world, the sixteen males dismissed the only woman among them—Oshun.

And without Oshun’s blessing, their crops withered, rivers vanished, and creation failed.

Olodumare had to tell them plainly—nothing could live while they excluded her.