My Bones Recall the Weight That Isn't Forgotten

My bones remember—

not in the way stories are passed with polished edges,

but in the way joints creak before rain,

in the way I wake already bracing

for what the day might ask of me.

They recall walking between two worlds

before I even had language for the divide.

One side braided sweetgrass and silence into my breath,

taught me how to listen to the wind

when no one else believed it spoke.

The other handed me rules

etched in porcelain and shame,

told me to smile quieter, sit straighter,

be thankful, be paler,

be less like something they couldn’t name.

I was built in that tension.

Forged by hands that never touched

but lived through me all the same.

Red clay under one nail, white lace under the other.

Always too much of one to be the other.

Always expected to explain my face

to people who’d already decided what they wanted it to mean.

But my bones—

they carry what couldn’t be spoken in school books or prayers.

They carry the nights I endured without saying a word.

They carry the screams I buried

so I could keep peace for everyone else.

They carry the way I kept moving,

even when my own legs felt like questions.

I’ve been burned by trust,

flooded by sorrow,

cut down to marrow and still—I did not break.

Because something in me, something old and unyielding,

refused to be erased.

I don’t ask to be seen as whole anymore.

I am whole—

stitched from soil and steel,

sorrow and second chances,

quiet and fire.

I’ve known what it is to feel the weight of what others don’t see.

But I was never lost.

I was just remembering what the world tried to forget.

My bones recall what I was never supposed to carry—

but I carried it anyway.

And somehow,

I made a life out of it.

Not perfect.

Not painless.

But mine.