Joshua's Poetry

All We Know

by Joshua R.

Tamar.

Five letters.

Almost all we have to remember who she was.

We have documents;

wills and records and sales.

But this is not who she was.

Tamar.

T.a.m.a.r

She was more than just a word with five letters on a list

among barrels of alcohol,

pots and pans,

bedding and blankets.

She was her own person that even we can’t bring back.

We can try.

We can try.

We can try to honor her and what she did.

We can try to call her “caring” and “strong”

but even us, after spending months researching her,

trying to bring her back to life,

can't know who she truly was.

She was not just a slave.

She was a human.

She deserves this.

She got nothing her whole life, so maybe after her life

we can try to give her

something.

Tamar.

Joshua’s Statement:

When I was learning about Tamar's life and what happened to her, I felt angry that a human could be treated like that. I wanted to help to make her story known to more people. While we were discussing what to put on her Witness Stones marker we came across words like “survivor” and “strong.” While we can infer that Tamar was both of these things, we can never truly know who she was. Even after spending weeks dissecting her entire life from historical accounts and documents, we can't know who Tamar truly was. We know she was more than just a name on a list. We know she was a person who deserves to be remembered.