Waxing poetic on thoughts, theory & the times
Performative, superficial.
Bandaid for a gaping wound.
The warriors cried,
the elders cried,
the parents,
the children,
and now Mother Earth cries.
Spirit watches
over children made capable
of atonement,
This day
is an attempt,
Though never enough,
to salve the genocide bled;
Yet
Daughter of an immigrant,
Callouses of colonial bonds keep me tethered,
To a past always out of touch,
Wanting to know my people,
Longing for a home that has been fragmented,
I am perpetually in mourning,
Of what truths,
now post-colonial,
I can never know.
This is war,
Without the name
It’s always been,
The slow erosion of their land,
Of their ways,
Their rituals,
Their families,
Their communities
Their lives
This is war,
Without the name,
Declared through false handshakes,
And broken treaties,
Declared through smallpox blankets,
And stolen children,
This is, was always war
Without the name.
We don’t belong here,
Most of us,
All of us,
We are squatters,
Claimants to possessions,
To lives, to land,
To stories that are not ours,
That are not meant to be owned,
And still we are a legacy,
Of conquerors,
Thefting still,
Without acknowledgement,
Often without knowledge,
Of the very sins we are committing,
This is our history,
Our story,
The ending is never written,
It is living by our means
And I wish to live love
And reparations into this Act.
I am the anomaly,
I am what they feared,
For I can see through
And into eyes
Not of my own,
I am the colonizer’s weapon…
And downfall.
All my self doubt,
Desire to prove
My worth
Was always part of the plan,
To drive me deep into the invisible Master’s hand,
That I should feel an ache of need
Where it need not be.
But from youth
I questioned,
Reverse engineered,
Dismantled my world to try to see,
What others might find to be wrong with me,
And I backed myself into the corner,
To the planned “tragic” position,
But this time I was not alone,
In the corner I found,
“Human”,
“sentient”,
“living”,
“Organic”,
And I put a mirror up to self and surroundings,
To see the thick of oppression,
We are swimming in the deep end of,
The oppression that from birth guilts the innocent
Into assimilation,
Without their knowledge or consent;
I am in the same colonial waste as my siblings,
with differing side effects from the toxins,
My color, my pedigree, my gender, disability, sexuality
are all just ways to peg me,
But how I view them does change the game,
I have my own damn tools,
And I am leaving master’s house.
She of Letters 