Stained Glass

(Written October 17, 2025 under original title “Graveyards”)

This new place is unrecognizable, with its new oceans and maps- made up of stolen heritage. Then again, it’s always been a place made up of stolen heritage. We just didn’t see it then, because we were young and naive and didn’t know any better. We were looking through a lens of mass white privilege.

A lens of propaganda.

On stolen lands.

A lens of eugenics.

On trying to erase people.

What an evil concept. But somehow, I still managed to dream in that version of our country, to have hope, with less despair.

To have joy, with less dread.

And to sometimes feel, free.

The walls were always closing in, but at least I had a voice to choose. Then they took that, too. And some of those men and women always played by their rules, inching us closer and closer to losing our rights.

Don’t play

Don’t fight

Don’t quit

Just work, they’d say Oh well. It was broken then and more so, now. It was never working for us, just making them richer somehow. Like stained glass, I'd found a false illusion of the American dream by exploring these lands. But these lands were stolen, a long time ago.

And their stories beg to be freed.

The privilege of our skin color led us to the minority of freedoms we had to begin with. Freedoms that felt like we’d had choices, while the backs broke of those beneath us. And the rich got richer. The corrupt, more corrupt, because who would call out their injustice if not for us.

And while I yearn for the America I once felt free in as a child, I'm grown now. And I know now, that America never existed to begin with.

It was all an illusion, like stained glass. Our country has always been built on graveyards of separated families, and now I’m awake and I can hear their cries. I’m sorry it took me so long to awake from this nightmare, and I won’t fall for their lies again.

May our ancestors guide us through the dark, for some of the realest humans I’ve ever met made joy from pain. And I will still have hope, though I’ve lost faith in the American way.

If they can rename our oceans, we can remake our country and call it whatever we want— a place where all will be free— that’s what I will dream. And stand as witness, I walk with my neighbors. A long walk, in good company, toward our collective freedom. It will be a place where our children will all be safe, never surrendered.

Our time is now, it has always been now, because nobody’s free until everybody's free- you were right Fannie Lou Hamer. You were right then and right now. You fought for our rights then, and so we will now. A passing of the torch to our brothers and sisters, next of kin.

Be brave, dear child, their ghosts are catching up to them.