A great mother hollowed by grief on the cusp of the darkest deepest descent into hell once bled these words

I will not die today I have much to do and say

Yet her skin crawled under the touch of raw chicken-like flesh colonial fingers invaded every part of her

Mother’s mother’s mother wanted to cease every breath send it back to the ancestors across the seas where the crumbling bones of generations without end lay in gently moulded red earth waiting patiently for her to join them

spinning through tight years of unshed tears she foresaw her loose cocoa and dasheen coloured children unmoored lighter and brighter each generation never passing the paper bag test

her flesh my flesh

her bones my bones

her blood my blood

one drop of her blood too powerful to ignore

one drop of her blood enough to hold her people mudbound in a foreign land

Mother’s mother’s mother labelled colonial chattel unwillingly constructed as the final bridge to our once uninterrupted history

her blood my blood

so powerful she stayed in a foreign land of sharp unfamiliar pain

she told my mother’s mother

You will not die today You have much to do and say

Mother’s mother’s mother prophesied about me me … an unborn future part of her she did not know

Mother’s mother’s mother told them not to die to root to grow old and grey she told them to echo echo echo her until they re-captured their own light walked their own path carved their own history as she was taught at her mother’s knee

ballooned by distant hope

she said reshape you future with your own hands echo echo echo me she said

The ever rising sun bears witness to her story

keloid scars remain like flares through the universe

centuries of invading lands homes bodies breaking sacred bonds like China cups on rough seas

history repeats yet they continue to fail to colonise my mind for great-great-oh-so-great grandma stayed in me

my strong line of great mothers stayed alive pressed paper thin stayed alive teaching in the shadows stayed alive carving furrows of hope in blood-soaked soil

Mother’s mother’s mother who stayed alive

for me to be me

We will not die today We have much to do and say

January 2021 For Mummy - thank you.