Nestled in grassroots enlightenment

I've learnt to search backwards,

ask my foremothers where to look for the sun.

​

It's in the pages.

The books tell us either true or disguised

of their tired outrage and how they carried it

forth in their bellies and on their spines.

​

You might trip into feeling

you have invented the rage, there

on the edge of your ego. You might think

the dawn that swells within

belongs to you. 

​

It does not. It was the cadence

of their voices that made us

turn to the horizon and wait

for the thrum of morning.

​

This is how they remind us.

We are black as ink and you

cannot write the histories

without us.

​