Deep

When I Became Currency

When they came for me, I tried to contain my fear and my heartbreak.

My bones longed for home as I, sick in the bottom of a ship, became a dark currency carried over the sea.

I was sold and sold again, a commodity, an instrument of profit seduced and sustained by greed, arrogance, and ignorance.

Cold and beleaguered in a new land unknown, I tried to forget such horror in my bones but the looks and whispers even to this day remind me:

I am a class of color created by a colonial mind missing its own self-worth.

But the dance of my ancestors in my bones have kept me awake and kept me alive.

I live beyond such limiting constructs of mind.

I am free because I am not confused.

I am stardust awake.

I am the earth and sky embracing all.

I ride the wind with the eagle and the hawk.

I flow with the rivers into all oceans.

I touch the sun and am touched by the moonlight like all beings.

I am Nature herself. Awake. Powerful. Resilient.

Generative.

I offer the love of all my ancestors to your ancestors and the ancestors of all beings.

I offer my presence like rain falling on the wise and the unwise, the troubled and the untroubled, the just and the unjust, so that the wounds of time may be healed in the dance of the flow of birth and death.