A Spark Reignited
Readers:
When I clicked into my blog template today, I noticed it has been 284 days since my last blog post. Let's just say the time away was necessary to reignite the spark.
Just yesterday, I found myself substitute teaching with Gifted classes ranging from 3rd to 6th grade. The fifth graders' assignment was to construct emotional, first-person journal entries from the perspective of a slave in the 1700s being transported in the Middle Passage. With bright minds around me, I took a shot at the task as well. It reignited the writing spark so immediately, I just had to include the results on this blog.
I march. I fall. The whip cracks. I cringe, grabbing at the chained ankles in front of me. How far we have trudged, I know not. I know only that each step brings the raw friction of shackle on emaciated bone. Each mile carries possibility of death--death I may suffer to improve the life of another. I drown out the woeful songs of my brethren and plod on...numb.
The ship is within sight now. A rickety barge more suitable for firewood than floatation. The slave driver shouts an order in his foreign tongue. We stare, blankly, only to receive the force of the whip upon our backs. The Rosetta Stone, the interpreter of all languages. Pain and cruelty know surpass words.
My foot touches the ramp and I seize. To step again is to step into nothingness. For what is my life without my country? My freedom? It is nothing.
The force of bodies shoves me forward and I feel liquid seep between the slits of my calloused toes. I venture a glance down to find my feet colored crimson. Have I been cut? Does the blood come from me?
Only then do I spy the many pools before me. Festering, fly-covered ponds of fluids, sputum, and human excrement.
My gut clenches and I wretch, expelling nothing but the few drops of saliva left in my parched mouth. Days since I have eaten, there is little else inside me. And what is inside me is of so little worth. When the Devil steals your soul, you are left a hollow shell. Why has God forsaken me?
~Scott
"Live, Learn, Teach"
And so it begins, again. Thank heaven. You have a gift, my friend. Use it.
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