The Ones Who Stayed

(A trio chord of a generation)

Grandmama Mama

They say I came from salt and teeth,
from ships that should have sunk but didn’t.
From islands carved in blood-inked maps,
where names were taken
and tongues were stitched shut with hunger.
But I kept mine sharp.
Fed people from hands that healed or threatened 
depending on how they treated me.
Never needed no man.
The ones who came, came soft.
The ones who stayed… didn’t.
Men disappear easy 'round here.
Fog and foolishness take ‘em quick.

I birthed girls,
lost boys,
buried names.
And I taught my daughters what to hold..
and what to let the moss reclaim.

Momma

I was born too light.
Hair like burnt honey,
eyes like river glass,
skin that could pass
if I was careful who I spoke to.
So they gave me four names—
one for each color in my blood,
one for each silence I learned to wear.
I used my walk, my wit,
the glint in my teeth.
Slipped through rooms
like I owned 'em.

But I carried ghosts in my spine.
Heard them rustle every time I turned my back.
I never told Maëlle who her daddy was..

didn’t see the point.

He was either dead or something worse.

And if he had lived,

he’d have walked right into the swamp

like the others.

Men don’t last long in our story.

Their roots don’t hold.

Maëlle

They said I was a child of bad timing—

a quiet mistake wrapped in soft skin.

But I breathed deeper than the rest.

Heard things in the cicadas

that no one else could.

Saw flickers in mirrors

that weren’t reflections but reminders.

I never asked where the men went.

Didn’t need to.

Some truths wear teeth too sharp to swallow.

I just knew...

Mama cried once in her life

and never again.

Grandmama spoke to shadows

and they listened.

And me?

I learned to read the air.

I knew which herbs cured

and which buried.

I kept the ledger of the dead

without writing a single name.

I was born with a knowing..

of who I came from,

and what I wasn’t meant to become.

I was not to be claimed,

only remembered.

I had sisters, maybe.

Brothers? Could be.

All gone, like fog

after the bayou breathes.

But I stayed.

The last root.

The only daughter

the soil wouldn’t swallow.

And they feared me for that.

But still—they came,

brought their wounds,

brought their hungry,

brought their wanting.

Because somewhere down the line,

everybody knows:

the ones who stayed,

the women who watched the water swallow the rest..

they know what lives,

and what can’t be killed.