The Middle Passage

Taken from my one true love.
My family and I forced onto the waiting truck.
We yell out all our protest, scream until we’ve got nothing left.
Our cries of pain fall on deaf ears.
We all struggle to breathe while suppressing our greatest fears.

Four long days into the nights we travel.
Cramped together without food or water.
The horror as I watch my mother die.
She’s shaking, freezing to death at night.
Her body would fall,
If it wasn’t for us holding her up.
And more go the same.
As we barrel down this endless highway.

The smell of blood fills the air.
Followed by the anguished cries of our sisters.
We enter through the gates of hell and we’re there.
And we are all there.

Oh, what a life I’ve lived.
Oh, what a life I’ve been given.
My children stolen from me again and again.
A lifetime of service for your kind and this is the end I get?

I hear my sister’s blood choked sobs.
The smell of my own death fills my lungs.
I scream to myself where is your god?
And how could I have ever been excluded from your love.

Where is your love?