Our Inheritance

We arrive on this earth,
Fresh out of the canals,
With an inheritance.
The curves of our mother’s smile,
The twinkle of our father’s eye,
The soft chuckle of our grandfather’s laugh.
We inherit,
The imprints of our grandmother’s hands,
The softness,
The hardness,
We inherit,
Collective memories
Littered with hard-fought battles,
And spritis and customs and stories
To guide us,
We inherit,
A sense of freedom,
Dancing on the tip of our tongues,
We inherit all of the good,
All of the bad,
All of the in between,
We inherit all of it.
In this world we are not the first,
And most certainly not the last,
To inherit a debt.

So if we,
Out the womb,
Nuzzled in infancy,
Unaware of the world in front of us,
Inherit all of these things,
Then what do we,
As a society,
A 400 year old cancellation of stars,
Inerhit?

Logic would presume,
If we inherit the dirty money of our forefathers,
Then we inherit both the dirt and the money,
The blood which spilled to create it,
The destruction deployed to sustain it,
This reality cannot be divorced from our royalties,
No!

We inherit,
The pain and suffering,
The lashes,
Upon lashes,
Upon lashes,
Upon lashes,
The famous last words,
”I cannot breathe,”
Muttered throughout centuries.

If we inherit the ideals of this foundation,
Then, we also inherit its sins.
Buried beneath it,
Breathing life into it,
We inherit,
That evil word,
Scribbled on garage doors,
Driven out of the mouths of young and old,
We inherit,
The beating hears of runaways,
Dreaming of a chain-less life.

In this world,
Some of us inherit privilege,
In this world,
Some of us inherit hardships,
In this world,
All of us inherit a history of harm,
It is our story,
We must tell,
It is our song,
We must sing it,
We must claim it,
But most importantly,
We must repair it.
After all,
As “Americans,”
This is our inheritance.