Imagine a new generation turning to the keepsake boxes inherited, recovering from the attics or basements where they were hidden, a shameful secret kept away by their elders long gone, and I wonder if they would recognize these remnants—a leaf once lifted now crumbled to dust, mingling with the handfuls of ash, sooting their fingertips as they smear it away to reveal what’s left, the bits of garment, torn suspenders with the leather frayed, a torn dress, plaid, its golden blocks faded, ripped clothes still holding the scent of smoke from the fire that burned the bodies after, if they held these fragments to their nose they could smell its linger because what is burned forever holds, and further still their hands dig, finding the chipped pieces from the Dogwood tree, their fingers feel the bark, its touch reveal their own memories of the sight of their blooms, (remember how from far away those blooms look like cotton, fluffy and white, ready to be picked?), they think of the cotton that made their ancestors rich, picked from hands not their own but those of another, those whose sons and daughters were stolen after, destroyed in a hundred varying ways, and what was left of their body stolen again to keep in boxes like these, so much of the body chopped and bartered, their teeth pulled, fingers severed, ears ripped, bits of charred skin and organ and bone, and as they look upon such artifacts, these souvenirs, are they explained away (the pulled teeth perhaps baby teeth, kept as family keepsakes) or is what’s been degraded recognized as acts of degradation, seen for what it was, or would they too sweep it away, uncovering the last, the postcards, one with hair taped to the back of it, another piece of the body stolen, and the covers revealing what cannot be ignored, the faces of ancestors gathered around, lined up like a church’s congregation, smiling, waving with their open-mouthed laughs, their mocking expressions, fingers pointing at a body made to look like a cross, perpendicular to the branch its fallen from—and I wonder who among the descendants would be proud to see, would want to see, or if any would look upon it differently, would instead view these tokens not as sacrosanct trophies or novelty memorabilia but just items to be discarded, thrown in the trash or pushed back into the trunk from which they came from, these tokens once of a day to remember, now forgotten, lost.
LATANYA MCQUEEN is the author of the essay collection AND IT BEGINS LIKE THIS and the novel WHEN THE RECKONING COMES. She teaches in the MFA program at NC State University.
Volume 15.1, winter 25
LaTanya McQueen
