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For everyone who doesn’t know where they come from

By Elani Spencer

For those who can only trace their history back here

For those whose family only knows war and bondage,

and fire hoses and tree tops

For those who only know suffering,

and peace is as foreign as English

being force-fed to them at the end of a knife

For those whose tether has snapped

For whom no point on the map draws them near

For those who don’t know their great-grandparents’ names

For those whose sense of being was lost somewhere

between the Gold Coast and Jamestown harbor

For those whose body mourns

for broken backs and blistered feet

For those who long for distant shores

they’ve never seen

I see you.

I, too, daydream about returning

to the place my ancestors once roamed,

of looking out at the horizon,

and realizing

this is home.

For those who feel a song crescendoing

deep in their chests,

their veins like guitar strings

ready to be plucked

For those who have bongos

hidden in the dips of their hips

For those who have mountains

weaved into their hair, rivers

cascading down their backs

For those who have sunlight

underneath their fingernails

For those who have storybooks

unfolding in their eyes

For those who hear the gentle whispers

that tickle the back of the neck

For those who know how to make a home

within their own flesh