Truths We Carry on Our Backs

These truths we carry
Like ancestral bones in backpacks,
Like contraband wisdom
Smuggled across borders
Of forced forgetting.

Heavy as history,
Light as liberation dreams,
They rattle against our spines
With every step forward,
Every breath of resistance.

Grandmother packed them
In stories folded neat
As Sunday clothes,
Tucked between layers
Of survival and hope.

Father hid them
In calloused hands,
Mother wove them
Into lullabies that taught us
How to stay alive.

These truths don’t fit
In their textbooks,
Won’t sit still
In their museums,
Won’t die in their archives.

They live in our marrow,
Pulse in our temples,
Dance on our tongues
When we dare to speak
What they tried to bury.

Some truths are too big
For their narrow histories,
Too wild for their cages,
Too bright for their shadows,
Too loud for their silence.

We carry them anyway —
Past checkpoints of denial,
Through metal detectors
That can’t recognize
The weight of memory.

Our backs bend but don’t break
Under centuries of knowing
What really happened,
What really matters,
What really saves us.

These truths grow heavier
With each generation,
But we grow stronger too,
Our children born
With spines of steel
And hearts like safe houses.

Let them search our bags,
Pat down our stories,
They’ll never find
All we carry inside —
These truths run deeper
Than their questions can reach.

We are living libraries,
Walking witnesses,
Truth-carriers crossing
Time’s troubled waters
With precious cargo:
The weight of who we are,
The freight of where we’ve been,
The burden of what we know,
The promise of where we’re going.

Watch how carefully we climb,
How proudly we stand,
How fiercely we protect
These truths we carry
On our unbowed backs,
Into tomorrow’s light.