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Imagine
by Isabelle S.
Imagine you are sitting in a history room
228 years after the abolishment of enslavement where you live.
You are shocked, confused, frustrated.
You feel like you have been spoon-fed lies
since the day you were born.
You’re surrounded by your peers,
friends even.
You spend your days and your nights
looking for answers you know you’ll never find.
Imagine not knowing how far away or how close you could be to
anything and everything.
Imagine being so curious about someone else's life that it’s all you think about,
every moment of every day.
Dreaming of an ending you know she’ll never get.
Imagine searching for answers with only questions rising up,
questions that will never be answered.
Imagine her life.
Imagine it as a little orb,
then crushed by the hand of someone who never knew her
and now never will.
Her life taken away from her
like she was unimportant.
But you know she was not.
You just wish others knew that, too.
Before
You are sitting in the same history room,
working hour after hour for what?
An answer you know you’ll never find?
At least that’s what you thought.
Before you knew what you know now.
Before you knew she was freed not once, but twice.
Before you knew she was promised land,
even a cow!
Before you knew she was a mother,
a weaver, a wife,
and so much more.
Though before,
no one knew her story.
Before she was treated like nothing,
like she wasn’t even there.
Izzy's artwork, reflecting the May 1820 runaway ad printed in the Connecticut Journal. Student research indicates Frederic Baily was Lettuce's son.
Author's Statement
I wrote these pieces for many reasons. I wanted to portray the emotions that we all went through trying to tell Lettuce's story. I think that having a bunch of poems only on her life may take away from the overall message and a poem or two about our experience may help the other ones stand out. I think I was able to get that message of our difficulties onto the page. I did so by mainly by using strong poetic devices, especially with my second poem and the repetition of the line “before.” I’m hoping people will understand what we went through trying to tell her story. Especially now that we have some answers, I don’t want people to think they were easy to find. When I wrote my first poem, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to portray the historical facts because it is all about what we don’t know. But as I started to write my second poem, I was able to show that we do know a lot about her now, even if it was hard to come by.
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