The Ghosts in Our Blood

They came with crosses and contracts,

their ink still wet with promises—

*progress, salvation, civilization*—

words that tasted like rust in our mouths.

They measured our land in acres,

our worth in tons of sugar, gold, cotton,

our bodies in ledgers,

our names reduced to numbers.

They built their empires on our silence,

fed their machines with our sweat,

spun our grief into profit,

and called it trade.

Now their statues crumble in town squares,

but the wounds stay open.

The mines are empty, but the earth remembers.

The plantations are museums, but the cane still whispers.

We are the ones left stitching history

from fragments they tried to burn.

Our tongues relearning the words

they tried to bury.

The debt was never ours,

but we are the ones who carry it—

in our bones, in the weight of our children’s questions,

in the way the land still trembles

beneath their ghostly footprints.

And yet—

we rise,

not as their shadow,

but as the fire they could never extinguish.