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/