Retelling and the remembering

composed for the Anderson Slave Dwelling Preservation Fund

Black spirits can not be absent
from anything. Especially in South Carolina,

where every open, abandoned space
holds a family’s erased echo,

and racism is embedded in every memory.
We, the living, have the privilege of being

restful ghosts. We haunt material things,
and hold our history in excess. But here,

and everywhere around us, we walk among
the haunted. A old house can not be entered

without touching its nostalgia. An untold story
is an unmarked grave waiting for revision.

This is why we preserve what was once
condemned: To put fresh ink on faded text

and to remember that we can’t erase each other.