What the Sands could Save
Every November, Harlem hums
coquito chilling, collards cooking,
a holiday approaching
that never sat right with me.
Before the parades, the plates,
my mind slips past the pretty lies
we paint over pain
and calls it “Thanksgiving.”
I think about Columbus
the way they crown him a hero
when really
he sparked the unraveling
of my whole bloodline.
Taino shores stained red.
Africans dragged into ships.
A continent bent under the weight of his footsteps.
And every year,
I whisper the same wish:
“If only I could turn back time…”
That’s when the sand rises
lifting out the sidewalk cracks,
spinning into an hourglass storm.
Suddenly I’m in 1492,
staring at the moment
everything went left.
Columbus stands on his deck,
smug, boots tapping out the rhythm
of centuries of sorrow.
And my whole soul wants to stop him
one push,
one word,
one shift in the timeline.
But the sand flickers
and replaces him with worse.
A conqueror history hid
because his cruelty
couldn’t fit on clean white pages.
He doesn’t want gold.
He wants erasure.
The sand darkens.
Across the ocean, Africans fade
not freed,
just gone,
executed on their own soil
before they could ever become ancestors.
The Caribbean I know
Bomba drums,
Taino caves,
abuela’s laughter in Loíza
collapses into dust
so fast I begin fading with it.
I reach for Harlem
its stoops,
its music,
its cultures braided like my own DNA
but my hand slips through the city
as if I’m a ghost
in a world that never had a reason
to make me.
If I change the past,
I erase myself.
I erase my people.
The sand spins like it’s teaching me
with every grain.
Then suddenly
a softer shimmer.
The scene resets.
Columbus steps off the boat humble,
listening.
The Taino greet him without fear,
teaching him how to walk the land
without breaking it.
Years later, Africans arrive
not in chains,
but in hope.
By choice.
Bringing rhythm, language, strength,
building a true America
with the Taino
side by side.
The hourglass rights itself.
Harlem returns
alive, loud, imperfect,
but real.
And I breathe.
I can’t change the past.
But I’m the proof
that my ancestors made it through
anyway.
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