We watched our seed scattered across this unknown land. We did not know where they would settle. Praying they would fly far enough away to escape the sting of the whip.
We were flightless birds looking for a haven.
We became slaves, bound to customs we did not understand, but the threat of the whip or death made us learn. I do not know why they called me Silas, but he stood there and whipped me until I claimed a foreign name, a name that is still not mine.
I claimed it and wore it on the remaining skin on my back. I looked straight ahead, and my Mother was standing before me. “Take the name, son, she said, you know who you are, but you must live if we are to live.”
I took the name, and my heritage fell off my body like the blood gushing from my back, disappearing in the dust, lost forever.
We were flightless birds looking for a haven.
They bury us in a speck of dirt that smothers our souls, never sending us back to the Mother. Scattered on the wind, lost on two continents, and forgotten on both.
We are flightless birds, flapping crippled wings, still looking for a home.