The seas are liquid roads with junctions and crossings that connect us, uniting us in moments of shared history. The wreckage of the past floats on the surface of our Scottish waters. The survivors and drowned wave their hands first to take notice. It's too late for rescue, but we can offer a proper burial. Do we recognise our misgivings and acknowledge the participation of the Scots in the nefarious trade? Do I need to spell it out? Barrens and vicarous sons of vicarous businessmen all get in fat as they enjoy the bounty from the business of the boat. The transportation of tobacco. The cash from course, linen cloth and sugar. The nail is no longer an option. You, we, are now living good from the bad that has been done. That harvest didn't just materialize out of denier. The fruits in your fruit basket did not come from your ancestor's sweat. They're broken bones and labour. There was nothing sweet in the bitter exploitation of those who gave you sugar for your tea. How much blood makes a sea? How much blood makes a sea? How can blood make us free? Have you seen the colour of black blood? It's as red as white. Witness me as a living memory. A ghost made flesh conjuring residual hurt. Picture me as an African woman. Drag by the legs as the ground scrapes my back like sandpaper. Then forced, squashed into an overflow and ship. Tolls creating sea-shaped hooks on the edge of the wooden deck. The pain so intense that it burns my soul like belly dancing in fernel flames. I jumped of my own free will to become free into the waves and a sea and belonging to no one but my family. In memory and in hope with leaf from pain, free and death, 1000 fathoms below. What does it take for a woman or a man to choose the waves and a deep over a reason? To a life, it takes nine knotted tails. It takes iron forged and Birmingham. It takes a young Scotsman proudly standing with his shiny buckle boot on black throat. Freedom or a slow cruise to a slow death to make profit for the masters of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Imagine only being seen as an opportunity being dragged across the salty seas of tears. To be worked like meals, machines, to be tortured, starved and to die in misery. They use my mothers and my fathers like an orange, squeezed all the goodness out and threw away the carcass into the pits of the forgotten. From free town to the plantation to what you see around you now. If it wasn't for the blood of my ancestors, those who were punished, pushed, pressed, pressured, peeled, poked and provoked, there would only be crumbs and dust and maybe whiskey. We are not our ancestors. How can we be? But if your father stole from my father and you live in the house, your father built using the wealth, he stole from my father. Shouldn't we at least talk about it? If he tried to suppress and sink the truth of the damage, you will never be able to truly grasp what we may become. Aren't we all job-times in his bearings? Cut from the same sheet of multi-colibbed skin, each one of us unique, custom-taded configurations welded by the bang of the universe. The flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, spirit of my spirit, child of my mother. Is this not true? Time to lift the veil, speaking honestly about the history, will give us a better sense of belonging to each other. We are no longer plain hide and seek. Don't you worry, I am still your brother. I am a person like you. You are not a racist because of something your great-great-great-great-grandfather might have done. Around Scotland's great cities, we see memorials to these grandfathers on street names, building statues and plaques. James Lindsay, Henry Dundas, Archibald Ingram, Andrew Buchanan, John Gladstone of Wreath, just to mention a drop in the huge sea of beneficiaries. We are the names of my great-great-great-grandmothers and grandfathers written. There are no memorials, so I will create them in my own memory. I remember. Marit Jela Vinah, Adonah, Tena Fatima, Tijan, Quakek, Meisha, Akwiyah, Fumke, Amana, Uluwada, Ayandeli, Fumlaia, Dilion, Jashara. And I ask that you remember them too.