A note about the poem “Mmiri III” by .CHISARAOKWU. for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2024 issue “African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations”: I am working on a poetry collection that explores African women’s practice of meaning-making in the wake of sexual harm. Mmiri III is the first part of a much longer poem that captures dialogue between two women with this shared history—though in different times and different geographical spaces—as they determine what it means to have this history and be free. Water enters my work because of its dynamic nature—it holds within itself multiple states of being, yet is always free, exists everywhere. It’s essence can not be created nor destroyed. Water, thus, invites exploration of the indestructible self. Those whose bloods have traversed the waters understand this. The voice in this excerpt is from the young woman who descended from the Igbo people of present-day Eastern Nigeria. She resides in a threshold (liminal) space created in harm’s wake.