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A person moved through the world with no knowledge and no assurances, only hope and faith to guide them through the belief they were making the right decisions.
They were invisible men. Numbers and not names. They had lost the privilege of being seen, existing on the periphery from the rest of the world, lost and forgotten.
Every day the world reminded him, both directly and subtly, that because he was black his life held different rules, and Jesse behaved the way he did in defiance of this reality.
what Mira learned that day was how easy it was to let someone convince you of their truth instead of believing in your own.
Choosing to end themselves rather than go back, because at least death would be at their own hand, and there was freedom in that choice, and they would be free.
None of them wanted to see anything else because the narrative that had been created affirmed
whatever falsehoods people wanted to believe.
The wind’s whisper through the trees made her wonder at all they’d once witnessed. What burdens had the trees had to bear?
memory can shift in its recalling, making the past become not what one remembers but what one believes.
They were strangers, tied together solely because of obligation for what used to be, out of an allegiance to what was.
When she was surrounded by the crowds watching the reenactments, it was easier to wipe her hands, to shrug in the admission that this is how it is and how it’ll
always be, but alone she couldn’t ignore it. Alone she had to face the reality of what she saw and her own participation in it, because watching was participating, wasn’t it? Allowing it to continue?
Any movement might disrupt the veil, the one that kept her invisible, watching. Her whole life, she’d existed on this side of it—keeping quiet, following rules, doing whatever possible to continue in the safety of being unseen, fearing the slightest transgression would put her on the other side. How many times had she watched as people like her got their spirits ruined from the unfairness of this world? She’d lived in the false promise that because she was invisible, she’d be spared, and while she knew now...
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They’d always known their weapons were their bodies. They stuffed cotton roots down their throats. Forced down turpentine and indigo to make the life within stop. The path to resistance was through what their bodies could do, and so they found ways to refuse at every turn.
For them it was like this, always, and yet always the early morning after, the sight of dawn breaking and knowing there would always be more, more to suffer through, more to resist, more to pull them down, knowing that today is tomorrow is yesterday, it was the fear of believing this was the way it would be, forever and
ever amen, and what remained were only the beleaguered days ahead.
“She may not have had anything to do with the past but what about now? She didn’t care about the hurt her actions could cause. For me it’s the same. It’s like the difference between drowning someone and not caring if someone drowns nearby. In both scenarios the person ends up dead. Celine may not have known all about the Woodsman history but she knew what happened to me, to us, and yet none of it mattered. She didn’t care about what it might mean to us. Look, Mira, I get it. It’s easier with the others, you expect their hate, their disregard for your existence, but Celine? We all were friends.
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“I wanted to forget. I thought it’d make things easier again to push it away and move on.” “We all do that, to some extent. It’s hard to live with certain truths of this world, so we ignore what we can. Choose not to look. We have to do it because otherwise we have to deal with the burden of knowing.
but that’s the wrong way to be. We can’t ignore it. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to fight.”
“I forgot. You’re a good girl. You’re so good you’ve let the desire to be it overtake you. It’s defined who you are. That day we came to the Woodsman house, I loved you for finally admitting something true to yourself, that you wanted to go, despite it being wrong. Despite it being bad. It was the first time you let what you wanted get in the way of how you felt you needed to be. You’ve always believed being this way was going to somehow save your life, but it has stolen it instead.
The ghosts had come for him because he’d refused to see how his history, and his life, were just as entangled in the roots of this place as their own.
“Marceline led me here.” As Mira said her name, she felt the relief of a sigh as she called her into being. Speaking her name meant she was more than a specter, to say it meant she had existed, that like all of them she had been real.
“Why?” Jesse asked, and his question hurt her heart. Why is the question we always ask, she thought, when we know what the answer is. They both knew why. Phillip understood the power his whiteness held and Jesse had been the easy target. Blame Jesse and everyone would believe it. Saying the lie would be enough to make it true. Phillip had done it for no other reason than he knew he could.
Weariness had aged him, but it had also changed who he was. Gone was the boy, bashful and sincere over the things he loved. The one who was self-conscious, yet daring when he needed to be, like how he’d been the one to stick up for Celine and Mira when they were kids. He was someone who knew what he deserved, and what he deserved was a better world than this.
Somewhere was a bridge where bodies were hung. Somewhere a tree, its branches twisted in the form of an ache. Somewhere grass grew from land soiled with death. Somewhere was a house built from blood, its prominent columns once a sign of wealth, of prominence, now become an altar. Oh, how beautiful. Oh, how lovely.
At night before they slumbered off, they remembered the stories once told. As they held them in their minds, they swore they could hear whispers—indistinct at first, always saying their names, a susurration, asking for them to hear.
