THE WEIGHT OF AN INHERITANCE
Week 5 of 17 — INHERITANCE: The Audacity of Still Being Here
Interlude: THE SHAPE OF LOVE
I have seen love take many shapes.
It has been a whisper in the dark.
A hand that hesitated before reaching for mine.
A door left open just enough for me to see inside,
but never step through.
I have mistaken longing for love.
I have mistaken survival for love.
I have mistaken the absence of violence for love.
But love is not a ghost.
It does not haunt.
It does not demand that I shrink.
It does not leave me questioning
if I was ever enough to be held.
So tell me—
if love is not the thing I once believed it to be,
then what is left?
And do I know how to receive it?
I. The Burden of Blood
I was born heavy.
Not from the weight of my own body,
but from the weight of those who came before me.
I carry my father’s name.
A name given. A name inherited.
A name that does not just belong to me.
I carry my mother’s prayers.
Tucked into my skin. Whispered into my breath.
Sewn into the seams of my childhood.
And I carry the things that cannot be named, only felt.
My father’s hand—
a quiet, steady weight on the top of my head.
A slow rub, just once. Never rushed, never forced.
A gesture so small the world might have missed it—
but I never did.
My mother’s eyes—
watching me like she already knew what the world would try to do to me.
Like she saw every battle before I had to fight it.
Like she knew one day, I would have to learn how to carry
a silence she could never break for me.
They never called it inheritance.
But that’s what it was.
Not wealth.
Not land.
Not a legacy wrapped in comfort.
But the knowing.
The knowing that the world would never look at me and see enough.
That I would have to fight to be seen as equal.
That I would have to survive things they would never see.
And maybe that was the hardest part.
The way they tried to prepare me for battle—
never knowing that one day,
I would be fighting wars they never imagined.
II. America — The Weight That Is Forced Onto the Body
Before I was a boy.
Before I was a body.
Before I was anything—
I was Black.
And that alone was enough.
Before I kissed a boy.
Before I even understood what I was—
I was already something to be whispered about.
Something to be warned against.
I was already a lesson.
Before I could choose what my body would mean,
it was already a battlefield.
Because in America, my body has never belonged only to me.
It has belonged to history.
To law.
To men who passed their hands over my head and said,
“You have a bright future if you stay on the right path.”
As if the road had already been chosen for me.
It has belonged to desire.
To the ones who wanted me in secret,
but denied me in daylight.
The ones who whispered in my ear in the dark,
then walked past me in silence when the sun came up.
It has belonged to punishment.
To a country that decided long before I was born
that Black bodies are evidence.
That queer bodies are a crime.
And maybe that’s the inheritance.
Not just the blood.
Not just the history.
Not just the lineage written into my skin.
But the knowing.
The knowing that I have always been watched.
Measured. Feared. Desired.
The knowing that my existence is a thing to be debated. Legislated. Erased.
The knowing that somewhere, right now,
someone is trying to decide if I have the right to live freely.
The knowing that no matter how much I survive,
there will always be someone who wants to see me gone.
III. Self-Reclamation — Taking Back What Was Always Mine
But I am still here.
I carry my father’s name.
I carry my mother’s prayers.
I carry my ancestors’ unfinished business.
And I will not be erased.
I will not be rewritten.
I will not let them turn my life into a footnote, a tragedy, a cautionary tale.
I was born with the weight of history on my back.
But I was also born with the strength to carry it.
This body—mine.
This name—mine.
This breath—mine.
This survival—mine.
I am not my suffering.
I am not my silence.
I am not a lesson for the next one.
I am a reckoning.
And when they look back,
when history asks who I was—
let them say I carried it all, and I did not fall.
Postscript
There are shapes we learn too early—
the shape of silence, the shape of fear, the shape of shrinking ourselves to fit inside someone else's version of love.
There are weights we inherit before we understand what they are—
names, histories, bodies marked before we could speak them into something of our own.
This week, I have written toward both.
Not to solve them. Not to untangle them. But to speak them plainly. To place them down in front of you. To ask:
What have you been made to carry?
What have you mistaken for love?
And are you ready to stop calling either by the wrong name?
—T
Reflection Prompt
Where in your life have you confused survival for love?
Where are you still carrying something that was never truly yours to hold?
Answer honestly.
Write it. Burn it. Or finally say it aloud.
But let it no longer live unnamed inside you.
Next week:
Interlude: WHAT SILENCE SOUNDS LIKE (7/26)
Essay: WHAT SILENCE TOOK FROM ME (7/27)
What they didn’t name, I still had to carry.
You’re so gifted. I enjoyed reading your work 💕