Unmarked Graves

For the voices beneath the soil, and the silence we must break

There are graves
that no stone ever claimed.
No hymns,
no headlines.
Just dust
and memory—
pressed deep beneath
the weight of history
and its habit of forgetting.

Unmarked—
but not unknown.

Some were stolen
from the womb of a homeland,
branded,
bound,
traded like cattle
on blood-soaked docks.
Their names—
swallowed by ledgers,
buried under ships.
But their dreams—
they still hum in the wind
and weep in our bones.

Others lie in sweatshops
and traffic stops,
in fields that grow profit
but not peace.
Slavery never left.
It changed uniforms,
learned spreadsheets,
and hides in plain sight
in hands too young
to carry this kind of burden.

There are graves
in Gaza and Sudan,
in the dry tears of Syria
where children play
in rubble
and bombs fall
with the precision
of indifference.
Graves dug
by drone strikes
and double standards,
by allies who write checks
while preaching peace
in perfect English.

The cost of war
is not only death—
it is what never lived.
The doctor unborn.
The poet unsung.
The mother who could not sing
because silence
was the only thing
that kept her alive.

There are graves
in our schools,
where dreams are crushed
beneath test scores
and zip codes.
Graves on our streets,
where homeless veterans
wrap themselves in flags
that never wrapped back.

Unmarked graves—
but they mark us.
In our silence.
In our complicity.
In the way we change the channel
when truth stares too long.

We bury the prophets
who make us uncomfortable.
We bury the children
we didn’t protect.
We bury the past
because it’s easier
than facing the mirror.

But there is a cost
to not remembering.
A cost
to not loving.
It’s written on our souls,
etched in our communities
cracking beneath the weight
of all we refused to carry.

Justice isn’t just a word.
It is a wound
we must tend.
It is a name
we must speak.
It is love
that costs something.

So do not walk
past these graves
like they do not call your name.
They are not just bones.
They are blueprints—
of who we were,
who we could be,
who we still might become
if we dare
to listen,
to rise,
to build again
from truth.

We are the living.
And the dead—
they’re waiting
for us
to speak.