The sonnet of the damned

1 “You mark my words, Massa, you’ll see the hell you’ve put on us,” I can feel my voice trembling, but I won’t stand down. I’m too damned angry to care if I live or die. My seed has been planted, and if my blood spills, it shall nurture that seed to sprout. I have had enough of losing everything he has allowed me to gain.

“Where are they, Selma? Where the hell are they?” He can ask as many times as he pleases, but I won’t answer. Did he answer when I cried for my babies as they were ripped from my arms? Or when I begged him to stop. Did he? No, he didn’t.

I felt a laugh bubble in my throat, and I couldn’t find it in me to stop it. Before long, I had tears streaming down my face. He may think I am crazy, and I probably am, but I am not the one who rips apart families for no good reason. Mr. Partin is the most wealthy man in all of Virginia. But, that is not enough. The blood that stains his hands was black, no red, but to him it was not because it was not white.

I long to have the option. To pick and choose what is and is not a crime. I wish to walk down the street and wave hello to Peggy without being gunned down using bullets made just for me. Maybe if my mother had been a pretty girl of fair skin, I could have lived as Mrs. Partin. I could live free from troubles and free of men. Men that own you and then push you into a sea of men who resent you. Men who resent that you can work with your hands and not your back. Men who beat you into submission, and dare to call themselves victims as well.

It is men like Mr. Partin that turn men like David into men who beat their wives until they are as ugly as the beast they are supposedly kin to. And it is men like Mr.

Partin who turns sweet young slave girls into cold empty shells. Truth be told, I don’t know which “they” he refers to. But I do not care, he can cut off my hands, and he can relieve me of my tongue. He can take away my pride and strip me of my will. The one thing he can never take from me is my audacity. I am going to float, even as he wills me to sink because I have something he longs for.

I hold his future in my womb. He can’t strip away my life if he wishes for his child to live. See Mr. and Mrs. Partin have a curse that has long set. She can not keep a child in her womb to save her life. But, Mr. Partin needs a legacy, he needs a baby that is white enough to take over. He needs my baby. And, while I do that he can search for what is left of Mrs. Partin. I get it now, though it took some searching through his ramblings. He is looking for those damned dogs.

He is looking for those damned dogs while his damned wife is floating down the Mississippi.

I hope he forgets about us too, for they will come by morning.

And when they do they will burn this place to the ground.

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