
We did not offer our backs
Yet we became bridges nonetheless
On this strange journey
Along the margins
We were sudden avatars
The past to the present to all of the tomorrows
Were held within us
Until we kept the collective memories
Of cosmic shifts and ongoing injustice
A society that prides itself
On modernity, on adaptation, on the cutting edge
But those cuts are delivered
By dulled blades
While the wounds grow infected
In the face of denial
We are the bridges
And man walks upon us
In a journey that goes only back and forth
Progress is trapped in amber
Slowed and then frozen
As those bootsteps seek to break us down
Keep us in place
And praise the virtue of the silent victim
They built it all
Upon us
They hold it still in their grasp
Upon us
And we must finally rise
to shrug them off our breaking backs – Caroline A. Slee