I Know What it is Like to Carry..

I am not one thing.

I was never meant to be.

I am clay turned in every direction:

a child of wind,

salt,

ash,

and silence.

I was born of stories that were not written down,

only survived.

Passed from palm to palm

in kitchens,

in sweat lodges,

in hymns beneath breath

where no one dared listen too long.

They tried to name me simple.

Tried to trace my lines like maps drawn in ink.

But I am red clay and cedar bark.

I am braided root and flint.

I am blood that crossed oceans in chains

and blood that crossed oceans in shame.

I am the daughter of servants and exile,

of women sent to marry strangers in broken lands

and they made homes anyway.

Hands blistered,

hearts quieted.

I carry them.

I am sugar field and heather.

Cane and bramble.

I am the silence of the Manahoac,

the pulse of the Lenape,

the ache of the Haudenosaunee

still echoing in my feet.

I am Mediterranean hunger.

Portuguese sun.

Welsh grief dressed in lullabies

and rain.

I am the breath of those enslaved,

who passed their names down in food and scars

so their children would not forget.

I am storm-fed, yes.

But I am still here.

And in the quiet places

where memory returns,

I feel you.

Not in the way lovers do.

Not in fantasy.

But in the way my bones shift

when the air changes.

The way your name moves through my thoughts

like a thread

I was born already holding.

I do not call it love.

I call it knowing.

And so..

I wait.

Not as someone half-finished,

not as someone lost,

but as someone who has already arrived

and is holding space

for what still must meet her.

You are not mine.

But you are not like the rest.

You walk the earth

like you’ve tasted the same dust I have

like you’ve heard the wind

call your name in languages you don’t speak

but somehow understand.

And when we meet again...

because I know we will..

it will not be a surprise.

It will be a return.

Like the river remembering its bend.

I wait for you

not in weakness,

but in honor.

Because I know what it means

to carry a promise

without speaking it.

To hold a space

without naming it.

Because something in me..

something braided through my nations,

my fire,

my silence,

my sweat and my scars,

knows that you are called

to this place beside me.

Even if not now.

Even if not soon.

Even if the road is still long.

You will come.

And I will not ask why it took so long.

I will only say,

“I kept the fire lit.

And I never stopped recognizing you.”

So this is who I am:

A woman of Turtle Island and the highlands,

of red earth and sea spray,

of truth carved into her spine.

I do not say goodbye.

I do not chase.

I stand.

I remain.

And I wait

not for fantasy,

but for the one

whose breath already lives

somewhere

in mine.