***Scars Called to Testify***

America won’t let us heal.

Keeps peeling bandages like it’s curious,

like pain is a language it understands better than peace.

___

Old scars get called back to the stand

Black backs, Brown bones, Indigenous breath,

allies learning what it costs to love us out loud.

The wound remembers everything.

The body does too.

___

They reopen history so we bleed in the present tense,

so injustice can feel tall again,

so dehumanization can practice its grip,

so last breaths echo like warnings nobody writes down.

___

But here’s the trouble with trying to keep us broken

we resurrect.

Again.

And again.

___

We rise with stitches made of song,

with spines forged from survival,

with light so brilliant it forgets how to bow.

___

Every time they summon the dark,

we answer brighter

born again, not by permission,

but by purpose.

©️MustafaSantiagoAli