What the Fire, the Body, and the Earth Remember:

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This poem centers on witness and endurance — the emotional steadiness of holding historical truth without spectacle or release. It feels calm but heavy. It is not trying to feel anything. It is trying to hold something relevant through another storm.

“Trouble don’t las’ always.”

— Gullah spiritual refrain

The red earth keeps its mouth shut.

It learned that early.

Beneath bare feet,

beneath iron, beneath prayer,

beneath the weight of names

no one bothered to write down.

Fire passed through here once

calling itself order,

then progress,

then law,

as if changing the name

changed the heat.

The body remembers

what the records would not keep.

Heat on the back.

Salt on the tongue.

The sound a scream makes

when it has nowhere to go.

Ash settled in

not like weather,

but like a second soil —

mixed with clay,

mixed with blood,

mixed with ice,

mixed with the patience of people

who learned how to live anyway.

This land does not forget.

It hums beneath moss,

beneath brick and pavement,

beneath the soft lie

we still call beauty.

Every step here presses something awake.

Even now,

every flame keeps asking.

Who burned?

Who watched?

Who was told to endure

and call it faith?

The earth answers slowly.

Not with spectacle.

Not with forgiveness.

Just witness.

Roots break stone.

Fire cools, eventually.

Ice melts, in time.

Bodies keep breathing

long after the story says they shouldn’t.

Trouble came.

Trouble stayed longer than it should have.

But it did not stay forever.