By: Alishia McCullough
rich and warm voices travel through the night
reminding me that they are around me and within me
they are fragments of my own voice
highly esteemed narrators and oracles
their songs echo in my thoughtless hum
their thoughts reside within my subconscious
they have passed down ancestral trauma, wisdom, and strength
their laughs are exuberant
beginning at the belly and rumbling off my vertebrae
my uneasiness in the land that I call home is their wisdom as to where I belong
guiding me closer to the origins of all humanity
they are the yesterday and the here and now
their eyes see answered prayers through the sunrise in my window
they are intelligent like the rice and gold they braided in their hair for survival
historians passing down the names through each generation so that we would not forget
they are the scribes who recorded ancestry in old tattered bibles
that would stay in families for generations to come
they are blackness so strong that one drop was enough to connect us
my ancestors are the beginning of every musical genre
they are builders and inventors of the modern world
the original creators of southern style soul food curated from table scraps
marinated with love and hope giving off the aromas of eternal life
they are the whispers in the trees
the softness in the wind
the courage in the fight
and the internal heartbeat that mummers
“they tried to bury us, but we rose”