The Fullness of Who I’ve Always Been©️ ☾𖤓 Copyright 2025 Felina Silver

At sixty-two, I am still learning
the many names my blood remembers.
Cherokee in the quiet ways𖧶
in the hum beneath my ribs,
in the pull of rivers I have never seen,
in the pulse of stories that arrive
like distant thunder, finally reaching me.

European threads, too🦉
colonizer and colonized
braided into one body
that breathes contradiction
but also wholeness.
A lineage not asked for,
but mine to navigate
with honesty and open palms.

But the world looks up,
and sees only Black.
Sees a skin that becomes a verdict,
a category, a single word
flattening the map I carry inside.
They do not see the old paths
crossing behind my eyes,
the ancestors whispering
in different tongues,
the nations in my marrow.

They see a color
before they see a human,
before they hear the stories
I’ve only recently learned
to seek for myself𖤓
stories I was not raised with,
but feel like home anyway,
like a fire I am finally
learning how to tend.

And so I walk𐦂𖨆𐀪𖠋
with histories layered,
with identities woven,
with cultures that do not compete
but coexist,
like rivers meeting the sea.

I am what I know,
what I honor,
what I choose to reclaim.
I am what my ancestors survived.
I am more than what strangers see.

And at sixty-two,
I am beginning again✠︎𐂂𓅃 𖧶 𖢗𓆙𐂂✠︎
not to become someone new,
but to remember
the fullness of who I’ve always been.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃