Wraith

They come at dusk in drifting rows,

with the patience of storms

that recognize old ground.

Nothing loud.

Nothing rushed.

Not angels.

Not demons.

Just the ancestors-

their silhouettes stitched with lash and labor-

returning for their things.

Slithering down the spines of highways

named for men who bought and sold their breath,

past courthouse statues lauding their deaths.

Chins lifted,

centuries of well-fed forgetting,

returning for their things.

Past the fields they carry in their blood,

trauma braided through their hair.

The ghosts of ships and shadows,

history’s tragic amnesiac heirs.

returning for their things.

They glide through rooms

crowded with heirlooms that never belonged.

Through hallways where portraits

look everywhere but backward.

Through parlors where silver gleams too brightly

for what it cost,

returning for their things.

Breaching bedroom perimeters

where descendants dream in peace

on the inheritance of someone else’s grief.

Walls thrum.

Chairs shift.

Doors unlock.

Karmic gift,

returning for their things.

When the reckoning is done,

and every debt tallied clean,

they’ll stand in the ruins of the whys and the lies

America keeps telling.

No fury - just the gravity

of balance resettling,

as they gather what was stolen-

the unforgotten claims of centuries,

returning for their things.