When you speak, 

your grandmother’s warm, worked hands 

strum the strings of the instrument 

that is your voice 

Embracing your heart, 

she pumps blood through your veins, 

supplying you with the fuel to be

of many, 

a self that knows she is not just one. 

You carry the legacy of a lineage 

on your back, 

like your grandmother bore your mother. 

On your shoulders  

the weight 

of an honest people who have known suffering. 

You are a self of other selves, 

the message speaks like medicine 

to the loneliness you’ve been served. 

The cycles and terrors of injustice 

try to digest you and spit you up, 

centuries of resilient blood and bones 

make up body your borrowed body

and bring you back

To continue the good fight,

laying the bricks and mortar 

on the road towards the world our ancestors dreamt