I. The Burden of Blood

I was born heavy.
Not from the weight of my own body, but from the weight of those who came before me.

I carry my father’s name.
A name given, a name inherited, a name that does not just belong to me.

I carry my mother’s prayers.
Tucked into my skin, whispered into my breath, sewn into the seams of my childhood.

And I carry the things that cannot be named, only felt.

My father’s hand. A quiet, steady weight on the top of my head.
A slow rub, just once. Never rushed, never forced.
A gesture so small the world might have missed it—
but I never did.

My mother’s eyes. Watching me like she already knew what the world would try to do to me.
Like she saw every battle before I had to fight it.
Like she knew one day, I would have to learn how to carry a silence she could never break for me.

They never called it inheritance.
But that’s what it was.

Not wealth.
Not land.
Not a legacy wrapped in comfort.

But the knowing.

The knowing that the world would never look at me and see “enough.”
That I would have to fight to be seen as equal.
That I would have to survive things they would never see.

And maybe that was the hardest part.

The way they tried to prepare me for battle,
never knowing that one day, I would be fighting wars they never imagined.

II. America – The Weight That Is Forced Onto the Body

Before I was a boy, before I was a body, before I was anything—
I was Black.
And that alone was enough.

Before I kissed a boy, before I even understood what I was—
I was already something to be whispered about, something to be warned against.
I was already a lesson.

Before I could choose what my body would mean,
it was already a battlefield.

Because in America, my body has never belonged only to me.

It has belonged to history.
To law.
To men who passed their hands over my head and said,
“You have a bright future if you stay on the right path.”
As if the road had already been chosen for me.

It has belonged to desire.
To the ones who wanted me in secret,
but denied me in daylight.
The ones who whispered in my ear in the dark,
then walked past me in silence when the sun came up.

It has belonged to punishment.
To a country that decided long before I was born
that Black bodies are evidence.
That queer bodies are a crime.

And maybe that’s the inheritance.
Not just the blood,
Not just the history,
Not just the lineage written into my skin.

But the knowing.

The knowing that I have always been watched, measured, feared, desired.
The knowing that my existence is a thing to be debated, legislated, erased.
The knowing that somewhere, right now, someone is trying to decide if I have the right to live freely.

The knowing that no matter how much I survive,
there will always be someone who wants to see me gone.

III. Self-Reclamation – Taking Back What Was Always Mine

But I am still here.

I carry my father’s name.
I carry my mother’s prayers.
I carry my ancestors’ unfinished business.

And I will not be erased.

I will not be rewritten.
I will not let them turn my life into a footnote, a tragedy, a cautionary tale.

I was born with the weight of history on my back.
But I was also born with the strength to carry it.

This body—mine.
This name—mine.
This breath—mine.
This survival—mine.

I am not my suffering.
I am not my silence.
I am not a lesson for the next one.

I am a reckoning.

And when they look back, when history asks who I was—let them say I carried it all, and I did not fall.