I am inserting a missing character into the movie Waiting to Exhale; this geological mound is her pedestal. In this cinematic landscape, black women are cast in lead roles as contemplative vessels. I unearth some additional parallels across our subjective experiences, centering the role of vanity and adornment as acts of restoration and repair.

Anywhere you set a mirror becomes a vanity or an altar, turning the act of self-reflection into a weapon of self-defense—the still life functions as a mothership and motherboard, a vehicle for subversion. Creation myth-making as black woman technology of self-actualization.