'Tressor'

In many West African cultures, hair braiding carried information that only the initiated could read. The pattern of a braid could indicate social status, tribal affiliation, marital availability, age, religious belief, wealth, mourning. During the transatlantic slave trade, when everything else was stripped away, women braided maps into their own hair and the hair of others — routes to freedom, landmarks, safe houses. The colonizers saw decoration. The women were sending letters no one could take from them.

Tressor — treasure. The braid as treasure. What is woven in with such care that it survives everything they try to do to erase it.

Braiding is the oldest form of coded communication. The hands know. The pattern holds.

This is for the woman who carries more than she shows and knows exactly what she is keeping safe.