same blood
Feb 2025
CW/TW: generational trauma via colonization, some graphic descriptions of bl**d leaving a body, reference/metaphor about chattel slavery.
denatured negro.
confused body in unusual circumstance.
same blood, different world. but the blood flows on the inside where light doesn't touch. it can't see the anything outside the skin; doesn't care; hasn't really needed to and has never had curiosity about whose body it was coursing through either. "if i'm in here, this must be a child of my land. yes, this is an Earth child, Sun child." the blood always said.
but a big shift turned the blood colder/slower. it remembers that change, and the generational body wasn't the same after that.
the blood knew that it hadn’t changed. and again, it knew it still ran through a child of the Earth and Sun. so, what changed? it pondered this for hundreds of years. there wasn't a complete absence of the heat and speed it was used to, but a drastic reduction.
after a few more generations, the blood had exhausted its explanations and realized something truly new and troubling. something outside of the body must have changed.
“this is not our land.”
"yes, that is why it feels this way." i finally admit.
but it asks, "and?"
it doesn't shame me for the difference, but it doesn't accept it either-the issue is urgent. it feels the bodies changing a little every generation, losing something essential. the spirit is retreating and regressing. this is not the environment that the blood consented to evolving in. the generational spirit-body is DEvolving.
it has been a tragic loss. in some ways instant and shocking, in other ways, slow, long, terrible, like a body being dragged along with red life force slipping out beneath it every time it is dragged against a sharp rock or thorns.
the blood misses the nature and the nature. they took us out of our nature and they took our nature out of us. it's one and the same.
“i remember you used to kill and protect. i got to be hot and fast in battle. where did that go?” my blood asks.
“it is different now. they beat some things out of (us)me in a few ways, and (we)I forgot over time. just need a little time to remember. i hear you.” I reply.
"well please hurry. i love you and i want you to be alive. i ache and die without regular use. and i do not believe that it is really different. there is only one world. but i have faith because ive seen what you can do with me." says the blood.
and being believed in makes me swell.
so i promise the blood; promise myself-that i will soothe the ache with separation & violent destruction of anything[one] preventing our escape, freedom, and return to ourselves.
deep river cross over|2025