---
title: "After letting the trauma in"
description: ""
contentType: "poem"
section: "poetry"
topics:
  - "poetry"
language: "en"
publishedAt: 2021-06-14
updatedAt: 2021-06-14
status: "current"
author: "Mari Lescaille"
canonicalUrl: "https://www.mlescaille.com/poetry/after-letting-the-trauma-in/"
---

# After letting the trauma in

I have to assume their courage too

I’m walking on their shoes and I’m carrying this in my back

I have to carry what has kept them going

I have to carry their resilience, their laughter, their forgiving love.

I have to carry with this life I’m in

And aren’t we all fortunate enough?

Not all.

Still, I have to follow the trail they left

And I have to carve my own trail

I think about my uncle with a machete opening a coconut for me to drink its water.

That machete will have to serve.

I have to pull myself up the way my grandma did that night grandpa was gone, forever.

I have to hold my tears the way she did that night

The softness on her acknowledgment, her feet breaking down on the way out

I have to remember when she put her hand in her chest and put her head up

I have to remember that’s the strength I come from.

The community they won’t leave

The community they built

Our house like a church

I have to walk with a heart that is so open.

I have to think what they really meant when they said *you see their faces but not what’s inside.*

I have to wander with the intensity they do for their people

And I have to stand on my own the same way we have been standing for as long

as there are ways to count.