There is a certain exhaustion

Stapled on my soul

Stapled and stitched inside this suit

Still unsettled

With all of its flesh and feelings

My soul holds the perception of itself in a strained grasp

I wonder what I will look like and feel like

On the day that I crawl out of this suit

Will I feel things the same?

My suit and I have a special relationship

I am intertwined to my body

But if you worked at the laces long enough

The knots of the soul and body would come undone

Regardless

My body is mine

For my ancestors faced the grit and grain

They ripped their suits

And placed pieces of themselves in their kin

These actions completed my puzzle

The only puzzle that could express an image of me

When I think of my puzzle pieces I think of you

I’m sorry I don’t know your name

I’m sorry I don’t know what habits I got from you

And that I’ll never know about how I twitch just like you do

You placed one foot in front of the other

Bled through your shoes I’m sure

You put so much strain on your suit

God.

I pray you don’t feel the strain anymore

Pray you forget the strifes I will never know

For I am absolutely astonished by you

You did it all.

In the end, you were able to give me the puzzle pieces I needed

I know you did it for me too

‘Cause my puzzle mosaic wasn’t the biggest hit at the art show

Your sacrifice brought me beauty

And when I lay in bed and think

I feel my physical sensations

I remember that strong blood bleeds through me now

And not your shifty shoes

This poem is titled “What it Means to Perceive”. It describes how I feel about my existence as a person and the unsettling feeling that can come with not knowing where you came from or descended from. I don’t know where I came from due to family circumstances, not due to the lack of historical records regarding my ancestry. For many black people, and other groups of people who have been enslaved, they don’t know their ancestry due to those records not existing at all. Their generational last names were replaced with the last names of people who enslaved them, and to this day, those original names are still erased. Their culture, dignity, and lives, as well as their children’s, were stripped from them, and their practices were banned when they were enslaved.

With that being said, I do not provide this poem to compare my experience to that of people whose ancestors faced slavery. That would erase the entire thought process I am hoping to cultivate with this poem. Writing is interpreted in a way that depends on the attitudes of the individual. Hopefully by reading this poem, people can take their memories and experiences, interpret them as they read the words, and find a sense of stability regarding their strife, even if it is miniscule or for just a moment.