From time eternal, we have felt you in the void. We have seen you in the stardust and in the lunar gleam that illuminated the void. We have seen you in molten rock and in the crystals and algae that became our rivers and our seas. We have seen you in jawless fish and wingless birds and have heard you cry to us from our first forests, where the trees became temples. We have seen you in the tiniest of ants and in the flying dinosaurs of our childhood dreams. You have traveled with us over glacial valleys and lava tubes, as we learned to hold fire in our hands without being scorched. You have traveled with us as we have entered caves and carved our names on their walls. We have seen you in the faces of our children as they have joined us on this earth, and it was clear you were there when they first looked up at us and immediately knew who we were. You were with us as dynasties, nations, and empires formed, to which we were said not to belong, but which could not have been assembled without our forced and unforced labor. We have survived traders and chains, bombs raining from skies. We have survived watching our children starve, then bleed and die, their faces growing dim, their eyes drifting away, no longer recognizing us. From time eternal, we have felt you in the void. May we also fill that void in each other.
Edwidge Danticat, a Sojourners contributing editor, is the author of, most recently, the novel Dèy (Knopf, August 2026).
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