Tell Me the Truth: Unlearning What We Think We Know

This is a deep, powerful, effective installment of a winning white narrative. Why do all of our adopted educational textbooks leave out the Tulsa Massacre of 1921? Why is the relocation of indigenous people described as “voluntary” when their descendants call it the Trail of Tears? Why aren’t we taught about the bombs dropped on MOVE, a black liberation group, in Philadelphia in 1985? Now I have to question everything. We should all be questioning everything.

I Come From a Long Line of Women

I come from a long line of women who have endured.
Their names fade now from weather-worn stones
their stories dissolve on their decaying lips
voiceless beneath the earth,
survival notched and nicked in their bones
where someone tried to break them.

Ancestral Healing, Genealogy, CreativeStephanie Allen SilentiJanuary 20, 202052Ancestors, genealogy, quickwriteComment

Evelina

How she managed to move on
from such unspeakable loss
I will never understand.
A new town
absent the stares
and the whispers of ghosts
and the seven tiny stones
of her babies’ graves
she began again.