For Oluwatoyin

My baby sister….

I see you in every moment of my daily life.

I feel you in the depths of my own trauma.

Most importantly I hear you.

Your voice is imperative to the revolution despite all its concomitant risks of our lives.

Someone took you from us.

It is my duty as your big sister to pick up where you left off and assure your life’s message was not in vain.

See I did not hardly need to personally know Oluwatoyin Salau.

Although Black women are not a monolith, as a Black woman I understand your story without judgement.

I concurrently have my voice attempted to be silenced the same way you said they tried to silence yours in the academy.

See, as Black women, we can exist and occupy different spaces but the silencing or attempt to silence our voices is an archaic practice deeply ingrained in systemic structures.

These systems were created to destroy us, but still we persevere and succeed.

This could have been any of us regardless of where you think you have privilege in this world.

If you are a sister indigenous to Africa,

If you have Brown skin, sis understand this could have been you……

Oluwatoyin Salau is our sister and we should all be our sisters’ keepers and continue to uplift her regardless of her being gone in the physical.

Oluwatoyin’s soul,

Oluwatoyin’s spirit will live on forever.