Should I be thankful to my oppressors I can claim them as being part of my heritage?
My spirit torn between claiming a stolen truth
A heritage I didn’t ask for but instead was imposed on me through shattered stories and teetering pains
My soul is torn shackled in endless chains. Is the slave’s descendant condemned to talk about slavery to create space for him?
My gaze cannot find rest in airless and hollow spirits.
Who do I look up to?
Parts of me long for the sweet hands of the motherland to hold me close as a whisper.
With outstretched hands We have been estranged by default not by choice.
I need solace in the crux of mothers’ bosoms Answers buried in books
Many years to unearth and dispel the mystery seeped into my rigged form of ancestry.
Feet thumping, cotton picking
The shackles never left
Only dripped into colorless promises fading into the night
Holding us hopeful for better days
Oppression resides permanently in our minds and bodies.
Untouchable wounds edged deeply on our skins never to be fully healed
Waiting to explode at the cackle of an outburst.
I walked into existence claiming the traditions of people who forsaked me.
A calabash of self preservation distorted by rigged forms of ancestry tattered by the roar of my oppressors.
Am I a fraud?
Did they take something from us that can never be refunded or exchanged?
Dust beneath their feet
The cornerstone they rejected
Exploited for sports, an afterthought
The shackles remain visible only transformed into empty promises festered in fuzzy fairy tale stories.