Is it pain that draws me back there, to the warmth of summer days, humid, popsicles dripping, washing my sticky fingers off in the waters, the same ones that feed us, that take us, that lead us. That pain seeps into the earth and grows its roots, tendrils wrapped among the heart lines, the same ones keeping the beating heart together. I count backwards with fingers, 6 generations, 7 generations, undefined generations and unnamed ancestors we forgot, knowingly, unknowingly, drawn into these grounds where the pain was sown. The cords pull me back to there, to cultivate and to harvest what was given to me, though never honestly mine, an earth beaten and abused, taken and unrightfully given, an earth that was made the stage of horrors without consent. But that earth made itself a home nonetheless, a giving ground, a remembering ground, a ground that has voice, voices that whisper to us who went away.