Communal Will from the Last Dry-Born
We leave you scraps salvaged at Mémère’s feet,
little fingers grasping at a lost lingua franca,
and in that timeless game of broken telephone,
their legacies become your legends.
We leave you our shunning of the hurricanes,
our refusal of their given names,
how outsiders give themselves away,
saying Katrina without flinching.
We leave you the tongue that learned to split in four:
French at the altar, English at the bank,
Kréyòl in the kitchen, silence in the squad car.
If you’re much like us, you’ll need them all.
We leave you mouth harp songs not written down,
the ones you hum but don’t know why,
hambone rhythms holding time,
those front porch open-window blues.
We leave you each other, the bitter cousins
and borrowed aunties, play-kin, god-kin,
friends made in the grocery line. Never forget
you are never alone, and leave no one behind.
We leave you the family bible wrapped in oilcloth—
missing Genesis, intact in Lamentations.
Take the hammer. Take the hymn.
Take the hand reaching out at the dock.
Take the memory of solid ground,
not to return to it,
but to remember what it cost
to leave our footprints underwater.
