A Tribute to the Bloodline the River Couldn't Wash Away

(I hope that this does not offend people but it was what I felt after reading of some mixed ancestry)

We were not born in freedom..

but we became it.

Slowly,

like sugarcane rising in dirt that drank too much sorrow.

We came in the belly of ships,

our names torn from us mid-ocean

like teeth from a jaw.

They gave us numbers.

Tethered us like beasts.

But even beasts remember how to run

when the moon is right.

We were branded

not just in flesh,

but in breath.

In the hush we learned to keep,

in the hymns we hummed low

so the overseer wouldn’t hear

what heaven already knew.

Still..

we spoke.

Even without a shared tongue.

Our bodies became the language.

Bent backs. Burned palms.

Feet that learned the rhythm of endurance.

And when they brought us south...

to the swamps,

to the sweat-drenched fields of Louisiana..

they didn’t know we came with ghosts who walk proud.

We made memory out of ruin.

Turned broken French into Creole

and dirt floors into altars.

We fed generations from pots stirred with whispers,

hands that knew spice better than scripture.

They tried to make us forget..

but how do you forget what sings through your veins?

Africa lived in us.

And we..

we planted her in the soil of the Delta,

let her bloom in every baby born

with wide eyes and survival already curled in their fists.

We were never weak.

Even when we were sold from block to block,

split from kin,

taught to fear the whip more than the grave..

we remembered.

And in remembering,

we rose.

Not loud, not fast..

but like trees.

Roots deep.

Branches reaching.

Some escaped.

Some stayed.

Some found ways to buy back the very land they bled on.

And in time,

we built towns.

Homes.

Legacies.

We didn’t just survive.

We expanded.

We married strength to sorrow

and made something holy out of it.

You can still hear us..

in the stomp of a Sunday morning shout,

in the hush of a grandmother’s prayer,

in the way we gather at tables

as if food could hold grief and joy in the same spoon.

We are the reason someone lived.

We are the echo of those who couldn’t speak..

and the voice of those who chose to anyway.

Let no one call us forgotten.

We are written in sweat,

in scar,

in saltwater and red clay.

We are what the river couldn’t wash away.

Truth is...

we weren't meant to be broken.

And yet we broke the world instead.

And rebuilt it

with songs they could never quite steal.