Blood Remembers

A Thing of Poetry, Ancestry, and Tomorrow

It’s been awhile, y’all. For many reasons, it’s time I return to Thingly Things. I don’t have much of an introduction for this piece. I only have to say that it is a reflection on my lineage and the times we find ourselves in now. Sometimes, remembering one’s roots helps inspire the seeds you want to sow.

I hope you enjoy this Thing and all the Thingly Things in the archive. If you would like to support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber and please share any Things that you really like to help bring in more readers.

And, as always,

Thanks for all the Things

-M.E.

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I believe that our ancestors
Whisper their memories to us while we sleep.
Weaving their stories across generations 
So that long after their faces are forgotten
Long after names are eroded from the stones of graves
Long after their struggles and glories fade from time

Theorists call it genetic memory.
The religious may call it reincarnation 
Or the sins of the father.
Historians may call it the past repeating itself.
I believe the blood remembers

The first time I set foot in Haiti,
I was struck speechless.
The sight of Port au Prince
Sprawling up and out across the horizon
Was unlike any city I have ever seen.
The kreyol chatter in the streets
Was incomprehensible 
Yet comforting to me.
Something in the cadence
Echoed Louisiana accents of my birthplace 
The food reminded me
Of New Orleans home-cooked meals.
Knowing my people
Had fled the island
For another formerly French invaded colony
Was not lost on me.
European and African fingerprints
pressed on our lives.

The people.
My people.
These distant cousins
Black and beautiful
In numbers I had never seen before.
But living under oppressions
Different from my own
And familiar nonetheless. 
I walked streets
And country roads
And beaches
And hillsides
My feet had never traveled before in this life
But blood remembers
So my heart knew this as home.

I met artists and farmers
Revolutionaries and missionaries
Healers and crooks
Dreamers and cynics

And I met those who still see Haiti
As only a place to occupy.
Populated by stolen property.
The look in their eyes
The contempt in their voices
Foreign and far too familiar.
Blood remembers.

My family tells stories
Of women who pooled their money
To buy land in Louisiana for their children.
I see their shrewdness in the women
Who negotiate with fierce sobriety
In bustling Haitian markets.
My family tells stories
Of my grandfather
Coming home from the second World War
To build a family and a career
When few believed
That Black men could make their own way.
I see his ingenuity and determination
In the hands of makers
Hammering art from discarded steel
And those who make a way
Out of no way
While helping others along the way
Because they must.
My family tells stories
Of learning the language of justice
From radical Catholic nuns
And Black revolutionaries
Binding faith and freedom
To their souls.
Making rebellion born of love
An act of service to higher powers.

My blood remembers.
So I have marched
And petitioned
I have written of protests
And made performances into demands for equity.
My blood remembers.
And it burns.
My blood remembers
And it loves.
My blood remembers
And it flows
Endlessly across time
Tethering me to New Orleans
And to Haiti
And to here.

To now.

My blood binds me to you.

And these beating hearts
Banging their drums
For freedom.

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