History

​History is not erasable.

It won’t disappear in a cloud of dust like all those 
algebra equations scrawled across the eighth grade blackboard. 
History is written in permanent Sharpie,
etched into the bones of slaves, 
locked tight around the wrists of a thirteen year old girl 
who cannot find her way out of this family she was born into. 

History lives. 

It is suspended in a glass of cold water 
offered in the blazing sun less than one mile from the border. 
It isn’t shifting sand or moldable clay amd 
cannot be hidden behind walls or swept under rugs. 

History is now. We are history. 

It lives in our bodies, is carried forward in the curve of our arms
as we hold someone close. History is built one person at a time.