I am not the year I came to this country, or the chocolates I ate cold from the fridge.
I am not the brown skin that faded, when my lack of language made me a recluse.
I am not the bicycle who took away my virginity for the second time.
Or my father’s favorite work belt he’d use to spank me when I’d act up out of rage.
I am not my rage.
I am the aftermath, the origin of all the flogging/
I am the riot in your mouth, because I’ll say it if you don’t/
I am the remorse, the apology/
I am my mother’s face/
I am my mother’s commitment to an end/
I am the spit gathered, collected and swallowed/
I am war descending into a carcass/
brittle
frail
delicate.
Yet,
We are cowardice in the form of social media/
We are revolutions crippled at the heart and bending at the knees/
We pray instead of unfolding/
We are cowardice in the form of social media/
We use hate to incinerate what should be left to ash/
We resort to cannibalism and wonder why we taste of blood/
We hide behind a keyboard and hope others will take on the work of war/
We are not rooted, we are stapled/
crumpled
puckered
wrinkled
We’ve forgotten our weaponry,
our nature to unwind and recoil and explode/
Our malleable has become rigid,
we break at the thought of upheaval
everything is self:
self-love
self-care
self-identifying as
self-this
self-that
and in a world of 7 billion
we lost our selves
in trying to remember/
