INFERNO

i didn’t grow up on the rez.
didn’t have aunties braiding my hair,
didn’t have elders pouring into me.
i had silence.
and sickness.
and the weight of a name i didn’t yet know how to carry.
i had to make my own damn ceremony.
alone.
with no one watching,
except the spirits i kept seeing in the corner of my eye.i didn’t learn who i was from a family tree.
i felt it.
in the marrow.
in the dreams.
in the burning that wouldn’t leave my bones.
so i went looking.
no guide, no map, no welcome.
and i found it.
i found me.
haliwa-saponi.
blood that never forgot.born in north philly.
black neighborhood.
brown skin.
white devil eyes.
no match.
no mirror.
even my own people didn’t know what to make of me.
but i knew.
i knew i came from warriors,
not victims.
haliwa-saponi warriors.
not the story they told.
the one they tried to erase.i was a dancer.
before the pain.
before the fire moved inside.
i floated.
moved like something not from here.
i was already in between—
this world and the next.then the body turned.
spine locked.
joints flared.
nerves screamed.
muscles betrayed me.
doctors gave me names like
ankylosing spondylitis,
degenerative disc disease,
nerve damage,
ibd,
autoimmune,
chronic pain,
invisible illness—
all code for you’re broken and we can’t fix you.but i wasn’t broken.
i was becoming.
not weaker—
other.every day since, i walk through fire.
every bite of food is a risk.
every night is a battle for sleep.
every step, a negotiation with pain.
but i never begged.
never quit.
i don’t exist for comfort.
i exist to witness.i traveled alone.
southeast asia.
europe.
i crossed oceans with nothing but pain and will.
no family.
no safety net.
no one waiting.
just the spirits,
and the promise that i had work to finish.i created for native by native
with no money, no team, no blueprint.
just red and black.
truth and blood.
to remind us what we look like
without the colonizer’s lens.i wrote this inferno
because there was no book for what i lived.
no guide.
no healing journey.
just a war i refused to lose.
so i carved it down.
for the next one who hears the drum in the dark.i called on the name t ^ hu
not for power—
but because fire needed a name.
i didn’t light it.
i am it.
i don’t burn for show.
i burn to cleanse.
to expose.
to leave marks that don’t fade.i unlearned everything they told me made me human.
school.
nation.
work.
worth.
even the names.
even the body.
even the idea that healing means being whole again.i didn’t come here to be healed.
i came here to remember.
to stay sick if that’s what it takes to stay awake.
to feel it all—
even when it cuts.
even when it rots.
because this pain isn’t weakness.
it’s memory.
it’s message.i live outside their system.
always have.
no citizenship.
no allegiance.
no slot they can put me in.
not black, not white, not other.
not able-bodied.
not broken.
not human—
not in the way they define it.i’m not one of you.
not anymore.
i slipped through.
i refused the whole thing.
and now?
i don’t belong to this world.
i walk with it, not in it.i am what happens when the fire doesn’t kill you—
it transforms you.
burns away the lies.
leaves only what’s real.
and what’s real is this:i survived.
i fought.
i remembered.
and i spoke it.
not for clout.
not for pity.
but so you’d know you’re not the only one.
so you’d know what survival can look like.
so you’d know what they couldn’t erase.this isn’t inspiration.
it’s documentation.
this isn’t a story.
it’s what survived
after everything else was burned.

^

he had to die
(for truth)

the old me
was a mask
a quiet tool
built for survival
in a world that feeds on the softhe learned to nod
to speak without speaking
to vanish in plain sighthe was strategy
not selfa shadow I wore
to slip through
the colonizer’s gripbut he was never meant to last
only to get me here
to this firenow I see him
laid out behind me
still, quiet
mission completeand I don’t mourn himI burn in his place
unhidden
unbent
uncagedthe rage is not madness
it’s clarity
it’s arrival
it’s meI do not adapt anymore
I take
I build
I strikebecause he died
I get to live
as I was always meant tounmasked
and armed

^

EXILE
(Set the Record Straight)

I don’t travel the world
for fun
for photos
for some fucking lifestyle.I move
because I have to.Pain chases me.
The system refuses me.
My own body turns on me.This isn’t some dream life.
It’s exile.
It’s survival.I didn’t choose this path.
I was pushed.
By sickness.
By silence.
By a country that never wanted me alive.There’s no home waiting.
Only fire I carry with me.Don’t tell me I’m lucky.
Don’t tell me I’m privileged.
You don’t know the cost.
You don’t know the nights.
You don’t know the blood.I didn’t escape.
I endure.What you should be asking is:
Why does a man have to burn his roots
to stay alive?Why is exile safer than home?Why does survival look like privilege
to the blind?Why do you only see the passport—
and not the pain that paid for it?Why do you envy the fire,
but never ask what had to burn
to keep it alive?

^

I don’t need to be asked.
I need to be left the fuck alone.

They ask me questions
then talk over the answers.
They don’t want truth.
They want control.
They want to feel generous
without giving up a damn thing.I speak
and they interrupt.
I explain
and they correct me.
They twist the knife
then ask why I’m bleeding.They pretend it’s care.
But it’s just another invasion.
Another extraction.
Another demand
for my time,
my energy,
my history,
my pain.They ask if they can help.
Ask what I need.
Ask if I’m okay.
I tell them—I got this.
But they don’t believe me.
They keep pushing.
Keep offering what I never asked for.
Keep trying to save me
from a fire I was born in.They don’t listen.
They consume.And when I finally snap—
when I speak with the fire they woke—
they play victim.
Call me angry.
Call me unstable.But I am not here to coddle them.
Not here to teach them.
Not here to be polite
while they poke the lion.I owe them nothing.
Not my answers.
Not my patience.
Not my peace.Let this be known:
If you speak over me,
you will hear the roar.

^

I Am Not Like You

You come to escape.
I came to remember.You treat the world like a playground.
Cheap beds. Cheaper food.
Photos. Parties. Pretending to care.You collect places.
I carry ancestors.
You chase freedom.
I carry war.I don’t travel to find myself.
I already know who I am.
I travel because survival forced me to move.You laugh too loud.
Talk too much.
Act like you belong everywhere.You don’t.You step into sacred lands with dirty feet and empty minds.
You don’t see the people.
Just the prices.
You don’t hear the silence.
Just the Wi-Fi password.The colonizer thinks I’m like them because I’m out here.
What they don’t realize is that I’m out here to watch them.
To study the infection.
To remember exactly what broke this world.I am not like you.
I’m not here for experience.
I am the experience.
Blood, bone, and memory.So don’t ask me where I’m from.
Don’t try to bond over sunsets and smoothie bowls.
Don’t tell me how “kind the locals are.”
They smile because they have to.
You don’t see the pain.
But I do.I’m not one of you.
Not your friend.
Not your mirror.
Not your excuse to feel worldly.I walk a path older than your passport.
I listen when the land speaks.
I bow to no flag.
And I carry truths you’ll never understand.So no—I am not like you.
And I never will be.

^

You Don’t Know What I Mean—Because You Erased It

When I say you erased us, you act confused.
You tilt your head.
You say things like “I didn’t do anything” or “I just want to understand.”But how can you understand what you buried?You erased our names.
Called us something else.
“Colored.” “Mixed.” “Exotic.”
Everything but what we are.You erased our languages.
Taught your god, your tongue, your rules.
Then blamed us for speaking with broken mouths.You erased our lands.
Built cities over our bones.
Put your flags where our fires used to burn.You erased our stories.
Called them myths.
Replaced them with textbooks written by thieves.You erased our image.
Told us to bleach, to shrink, to behave.
Sold us beauty wrapped in whiteness.
Called us ugly, then exotic, then trend.You erased our memories.
Generation after generation.
Until some of us started erasing ourselves.
To survive.So when I say you don’t know who I am—
It’s not an insult.
It’s a consequence.You erased us so well,
you erased even the ability to recognize what you erased.That’s why you’re confused.
That’s why you don’t get it.You think erasure means blood and war.
But it’s quieter than that.
It’s schools.
It’s churches.
It’s paperwork.
It’s praise for how well we’ve “adjusted.”And still—we remember.
Not because you left us anything.
But because we carry what you tried to destroy.So no—I don’t need you to understand.
But don’t pretend it didn’t happen.
And don’t ask me to explain your own crimes to you.You erased us.
That’s why you don’t see us.
That’s why you don’t get us.
That’s why we burn when you speak peace.

^

Why I Don’t Like Thailand

It’s too soft.
Too many fake smiles, too much polite silence masking what people really feel.
Kindness without courage. Hospitality without honesty.This isn’t peace—it’s programming.
The colonizer did this.
Trained a whole people to swallow truth, smile through pain, obey without question.
Centuries of fear dressed up as culture.And whiteness sits at the center.
Worshipped.
Copied.
Bleached into skin and minds.
Western looks. Western status. Western men—seen as gods.I walk through it and see everything.
The masks. The suppression. The quiet begging not to be seen too clearly.
But I see it all.They’re afraid of my fire.
Not because I’m loud—but because I’m free.
I speak what they were taught to bury.
I stand when they were taught to bow.I’m surrounded by softness.
Not tenderness—weakness.
The kind bred by trauma and passed off as tradition.And when I move through it, it trembles.
Because I am not colonized.
I am the storm that remembers.So no—I don’t like Thailand.
Not because I don’t see its beauty.
But because I see too much.
And I won’t play along.

^

This Isn’t Your Healing Journey

Don’t talk to me about healing.
Don’t talk to me about meditation.
Don’t talk to me about finding peace.You read a book.
Booked a flight.
Bought some beads.
Now you think you understand struggle.You think because you came to Thailand or India,
the answers are here for me.
As if I’m lost.
As if I need saving.
As if my path was ever yours to guide.You talk about letting go—
I talk about holding on.
To memory.
To truth.
To the ones who were silenced before me.I don’t need your gurus.
I don’t need your temples.
I don’t need another culture’s wisdom to find my own.I don’t run. I don’t retreat. I don’t disappear into the jungle to feel whole.
I fight.
I carry blood and stories and scars that don’t wash off.
My healing is not soft.
It is not pretty.
It is not for you to understand.So next time you try to hand me your version of peace,
remember—
you came here to escape.
I came here to remember.
And we are not the same.

^

“Not Everyone?" Not My Problem.

Every time I speak the truth,
you run behind that tired phrase—
“Well, not everyone…”As if that changes anything.
As if your innocence
erases the blood.
As if your guilt
needs my forgiveness to breathe.“Not everyone” didn’t stop the land from being stolen.
Didn’t stop the schools from beating the Native out of children.
Didn’t stop the diseases.
Didn’t stop the hunger.
Didn’t stop the silence.“Not everyone” is a privilege I’ve never had.
I wasn’t given the option to separate
the kind from the cruel.
The hand that helped
from the hand that held the whip.When it came for us,
it came as one.
One system.
One silence.
One theft.So no—
I don’t care if it wasn’t you.
You still benefit.
You still carry the comfort of a history
that never hunted you.Don’t ask me to make you feel better
about what your people did.
Don’t expect softness
from the ones who were never given any.This isn’t about your feelings.
This is about our truth.
And if that makes you uncomfortable—
good.
It should.

^

You Think It’s Over?

You think my fight is in the past.
That what was done to us is over.
That I’m lucky just to be here.You look at me and think I’m free.
Because I’m out here, moving, creating, living.
But freedom?
You don’t know what that means.
I move because I have to.
I adapt to survive.
That’s not freedom—
that’s strategy.
That’s survival wrapped in silence.Every day I wake up in a body that doesn’t let me forget.
Spine locked.
Nerves on fire.
Organs in revolt.
Pain that claws at me before I even stand.And still—
I move.
I carry it.
Because I have no other choice.You don’t see the war behind my eyes.
The weight of knowing, every minute,
that my existence makes you uncomfortable.
That my truth won’t fit into your comfort zone.You smile at me,
but you don’t see me.
You hear me speak,
and you psychoanalyze—
as if you could possibly understand
what it means to carry generations of erasure in your chest.You call me proud.
Angry.
Too much.
Because I refuse to shrink myself
to fit your fragile sense of peace.You think it’s over.
Because you get to forget.
Because you were never hunted.
Never displaced.
Never forced to translate your soul into someone else’s language just to survive.This isn’t the aftermath.
This is now.
This is every breath I take through pain.
Every moment I let you speak, knowing you don’t have the range.
Every step forward while dragging the weight of everything you call “history.”So no—
I’m not free.
Not by your definition.
And I’m not done.
Because the war never ended.
You just stopped paying attention.

^

Not Yours. Not Mine. Still You Preach.

You tell me to meditate.
To let go.
To find stillness.
As if you understand what any of that means.But the teachings you toss at me—
they’re not even yours.
Not from your people.
Not from mine either.They’re Asian.
Sacred.
Ripped from temples, turned into trends.
You picked them up in yoga class
or on some “spiritual journey”
you can’t even explain.And now you think you can offer them to me
like answers.
Like bandages for wounds you don’t carry.You colonized the medicine
and forgot the meaning.
You took someone else’s way of healing
and turned it into a product—
then tried to sell it to me
like it came from your soul.I don’t need that.
Not from you.
Not from anyone.I don’t need to breathe it away.
I need to burn through it.
I don’t need mantras in a language you mispronounce
or energy talk from someone who’s never sat with real pain.Keep your adopted rituals.
You don’t even know what you’re holding.
And I don’t need your help
to remember who I am.

^

"Let It Go?"

You tell me to let it go.
Move on.
Stop caring so much.You think I hold this fire
because I want your approval.
That I speak like this
because I care what you think.You’ve got it backwards.
I don’t carry this for you.
I carry it because I have to.
Because I walk through a world
that tries to erase me
every single day.You say, don’t take it so personal.
But it is personal—
when the system sees my existence as a threat.
When the stares, the silence, the suspicion
aren’t random.
They’re reminders.External forces press on me constantly—
from laws to looks,
from stolen opportunities
to stolen histories.And when I respond?
You call me angry.
Tell me I’m stuck.
That I should just breathe,
meditate,
forget.But I’m not stuck.
I’m surrounded.
And still—
I stand.
I speak.
I fight.Not because I care what you think.
But because I don’t.
Because I refuse to be reshaped
for your comfort.So no—
I won’t let it go.
I won’t get over it.
I won’t calm down.This world comes at me every day.
And I’m still here.
Unapologetic.
Unmoved.
Unbroken.

^

What You Don’t See

You see me walking.
Existing.
Creating.
So you think I’m fine.You don’t see what it takes.
You don’t feel what I carry.Chronic pain isn’t just pain.
It’s waking up in a body that fights me.
Every breath, a negotiation.
Every step, a question: Can I do this today?And I’ve been doing this my whole life.
But the last five years?
Nonstop.
No relief.
No peace.Ankylosing spondylitis—
my spine trying to turn to stone.
Each movement a risk.
Each morning a battle just to stand.Degenerative disc disease—
like shattered glass in my back.
Twist wrong? Pain.
Sit too long? Pain.
Exist? Pain.IBD—
a gut that punishes me daily.
Cramping, burning, bleeding.
Food brings fear,
not fuel.Nerve damage—
fire under my skin.
Electric shocks.
Tingling, stabbing.
Nothing touches it.
Nothing stops it.Fatigue—
not tired.
Depleted.
Like dragging chains
while the world tells me to hustle.And then—
three heart attacks.
Survived.
Alone.
No ambulance. No help.
Just me, riding it out,
refusing to die.No pills.
No prescriptions.
No crutch.
I do this raw.
I do this alone.
Because this world was never going to save me.
So I had to learn to save myself.And I know why this is my life.
Colonial sickness.
Centuries of displacement,
violence,
forced diets,
spiritual disconnection.
This body remembers
even when no one else wants to.So don’t offer me your fucking help.
Don’t offer your band-aids made of privilege.
Don’t tell me to breathe or stretch or pray it away.You call me strong.
You’re damn right.
But not because I fake it.
Because I face it.
Because I live in a body that tries to break me
and I still move.
Still create.
Still fight.I am a warrior.
Not in theory.
Not in metaphor.
In blood.
In pain.
In truth.

^

NO COUNTRY

They got nations that mirror them.
Flags that protect them.
Languages that cradle them.
Gods that look like their fathers.We had the world.
Then they took it.
Carved it into cages.
Made us strangers to our own blood.We were scattered.
Split. Assimilated.
Made to forget,
then blamed for being lost.They ask why we’re angry.
Why we keep to ourselves.
Why we carry grief like a weapon.Because we got no country.
Only memory.
Only pieces.
Only the fire we build with our bare hands.They tell us to move on.
To smile.
To shrink.
To be grateful.But we remember.
We remember what was stolen.
We remember who we were
before their maps.
Before their churches.
Before they renamed our mothers.We were not broken.
We were broken open.
And from that wound,
the fire returned.We are not lost.
We are not less.
We are the reckoning.Still building.
Still speaking.
Still burning.

^

FOR WHITES WHO THINK THEY’RE DIFFERENT.

You think you’re not like them.
You all think that.You bring your little smile,
your rehearsed shame,
your eager empathy,
and you think it’s new.I’ve met you before.
Thousands of times.
More than you ever will meet of me.And every time—
same questions,
same guilt,
same ego.
You think you’re helping.
You think you see me.You don’t.You’re not different.
You’re not better.
You’re not “one of the good ones.”You’re the system,
wearing softer clothes.And when you open your mouth
thinking you know something—
I already know what’s coming.You are not a revelation.
You are not a friend.
You are not safe.You are just
another ghost
in the colonizer’s costume.Step back.
Listen.
Burn.

^

You Built the Lie. Now Die in It.

The Reckoning is not a protest.
It’s not a movement.
It’s not a call for peace.It is war.We are the original.
The first.
The people of the land before borders, before flags, before their gods arrived with guns.I am TAHU ^ — fire and armor.
And we are the memory they tried to erase.
The bloodline they failed to kill.
The storm that comes when the lies stop working.The Reckoning is the return of truth.
Not the kind they can debate.
The kind that rips through false histories.
The kind that drags their guilt into daylight.They built a system on bones and illusions.
A rotting empire of paper and power,
money that means nothing,
titles that mean less.They suffer too—
chained by the same machine they built to rule us.
Empty souls in glass towers.
Addicted to control.
Devoured by the very lies they used to conquer.But they call it freedom.
They call it success.We call it what it is:
Delusion.
Decay.
Death with better marketing.We remember.
And we are not asking.
We are not negotiating.We are The Reckoning.
And they are fucked
because the system that fed them
is now feeding on them.And when they finally feel it,
it will already be too late.

^

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM

You
are not the beginning.
You
are the infection.You didn’t discover the world.
You invaded it.
You mapped it to control it.
You named it to own it.
You broke it to feel powerful.You exported your violence
like it was charity.
Your medicine is poison.
Your freedom is a cage.
Your science is a scalpel
cutting the earth open
just to see what bleeds.You built nations
on the bones of children.
And then asked for thanks.You brought machines,
but left no soul.
You taught us to want
and forgot how to be.
You called it “progress”
but all I see is death.Every country you touched
still carries your disease.
Borders, banks, bombs—
all yours.
Debt. Greed. Extraction—
all yours.You say “We’re not all like that.”
But I’ve met thousands of you.
Same eyes. Same lies.
Same arrogance in your voice
when you explain the world
to the people you stole it from.You are the ones
killing the ocean.
Raping the land.
Burning the sky.This planet is not your home.
It never was.
You are the trespasser.
The parasite.We remember
what the earth was
before you arrived.
We will remember
when you’re gone.And the world
will finally breathe again.

^

To Romania

I’ve heard your stories.
Your pain.
Your poverty.
Your past.Communism.
Hard times.
A land held down.I don’t deny it.
But don’t you dare
stand in front of me
like we are the same.You were occupied.
I was stolen.You lost power.
I was born without any.You rebuilt.
We were never allowed to begin.Your wounds are real—
but they are not like mine.
Don’t dress up suffering in a new uniform
and expect me to salute.You still have your land.
Your tongue.
Your name.My people lost all three.
And still, I rise—
not asking for pity,
but speaking fire.You want me to listen
while you tell your version of pain.
But I’m not here to compare scars.
I’m here to tell you—
some of us were designed to disappear.
And we didn’t.So don’t pull the “we know struggle” card
while you gawk at my skin,
question my presence,
and whisper when I pass.I am not the visitor.
You are.
To truth.
To history.
To the weight I carry without choice.You don’t need to understand me.
You just need to stop
pretending that you do.

^

I Am

They study.
I remember.They collect fragments,
build theories,
label truths.But I was born with it burned into me.Not learned.
Lived.Not a path I chose—
a path I am.They think knowledge is power.
But they don’t know what knowing is.
They don’t know what it means
to speak with your dead,
to carry centuries in your spine,
to feel your people move through your blood.They think memory is history.
A story to be told.
A subject to debate.But for me—
it’s breath.
It’s marrow.
It’s the sound in my chest
before words.When I speak,
I’m not speaking English.
I’m translating fire.They think we’re the same
because they hear familiar syllables.
But I’m not speaking to be understood.
I’m speaking to exist.Their problem is deeper
than ignorance.It’s in the names they gave themselves—
human.
people.Words they made to cage the wild.
To stand apart from everything else.
As if to say:
we are separate.
We are something different.
We are not the land,
not the water,
not the animal,
not the ancestor.But I am.I don’t need those words.
They mean nothing.
They are the first wound.
The first lie.
The beginning of forgetting.I never forgot.That’s why I walk different.
That’s why I survive.I am not human.
I am not people.I am what they lost.
I am what they fear.
I am the one before the words.

^

To Germany

You perfected genocide
then taught the world to forget.You erased blood
with bureaucracy.
You buried shame
beneath museums and silence.But we remember.
We carry the scars of your science,
your order,
your need to sterilize the wild.You looked across the ocean
and found inspiration
in how America broke us.
Stole their blueprint.
Built your camps.
Refined their cruelty.You are not separate from them.
You are their brother.
Their mirror.
Their echo in a different accent.You believe you atoned.
You think reparations are enough.
But your hands are still dirty.
You fund the machine.
You guard the gate.
You profit from the pillaged bones
of the world you helped burn.You still police our stories.
You still gawk at our pain
like it’s an exhibit.I walk your streets
and feel the eyes—
filthy with fear,
twisted with hate.
They don’t know what I am.
But they know I don’t belong.They stare at my skin,
then get caught in my eyes.
Light.
Unnatural.
A curse from the colonizer.
A tool I turned against you.You trust me for a second—
until you don’t.
Until something in you
remembers what your ancestors did
to eyes like mine
before they could look back.They flinch when I look back.
I don’t speak—
I pull.
I tear the fear from behind their teeth.
Make them see what they buried.
Make them remember what they thought
was gone.And now my face speaks
before I do.
Forty-three scars under these eyes—
for every year stolen.
Arrows carved into my skin
to mark the direction of return.
Three lines on my chin—
falling, rising, standing.
This is not art.
It’s the map to the fire.
It’s the proof that I remember
what you worked so hard to erase.They look at me like I’m wrong.
But I’m the prophecy.
The ghost they couldn’t kill.We are not here for pity.
We are not here to educate you.
We are the consequence
of what you tried to erase.We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
The fire will reach you too.This is the Reckoning.
And Germany—
you are not exempt.

^

TO THE EUROPEAN WHO THINKS THEY’RE INNOCENT

you think this isn’t about you.
you think the wound was across the ocean.
that the crime was committed by someone else.
in a place you’ve never been.
but the blood is still on your hands.
because you still benefit.you live in europe.
you are europe.
and europe never stopped extracting.
never stopped feeding
off the bones of the people it broke.your comforts
were stolen.
your stability
was built on our ruin.
your healthcare
comes from our illness.
your culture
from our erasure.you walk through markets
filled with goods that cost us our health.
you use our plants, our spices, our sacred practices—
repackaged, renamed, resold.
and then you tell us we’re too angry.you didn’t colonize us with swords—
you did it with structure.
with silence.
with laws.
with trade deals.
with smiling tourists
and “aid” that poisons more than it heals.you say
“i didn’t do it.”
“i wasn’t alive back then.”
but you are alive now.
and you are still taking.the food that sickens me
was made for your shelves.
the systems that discard me
were built to serve your needs.
the pain in my spine,
the fire in my gut,
the collapse of my nerves—
it’s all from what you’ve built
and refuse to dismantle.you live on clean streets
because our lands were stripped.
you breathe easy
because our lungs carry the smoke.
you feel peace
because our bodies carry the war.don’t tell me this is over.
don’t tell me you’re different.
you are europe.
and europe is still the colonizer.
no matter how soft your voice sounds.so until you give it all back—
until your comfort costs you something—
don’t speak.
just listen.because i am still burning.
and this time
you will feel the heat.

^

THEY SAY “PEOPLE”

they say people
as if the word covers all
as if the word holds me toobut when they speak it
they see their own faces
their own blood
their own comfortpeople is their code for colonizer
their way of naming themselves
while pretending to name us allit’s a soft word for erasure
a trick of the tongue
a way to bury the line
between thief and the stolen fromthey say people suffer
people struggle
but their suffering is comfort lost
their struggle is privilege dentedours is centuries long
built from the bones they still walk onthey use people
to fold us into their story
so they can pretend
they didn’t burn ours downi am not their people
my people are not theirs
we carry a fire they will never holdwhen the reckoning comes
they will learn the truth
of who their people really are
and who we always were
before they arrived.

^

TO SPAIN
(THIS IS A CURSE)

you were the first
the original virus
the mold they used
to cast every colonizer after youbefore england, before france—
it was you
that brought the sword to the altar
and called it salvationyou didn’t discover
you infected
you didn’t conquer
you poisonedyou came with crosses
but left with gold
you built cathedrals
on top of corpsesyou raped continents
with a smile
and taught your sons
to do the sameyour ships
were coffins
your priests
were executionersyou taught the world
how to kneel on a neck
how to erase a language
how to break a child
until they beg to be whiteyou brag about your art,
your music, your wine—
but all of it
is soaked in stolen bloodbullfighters
dancing in the ruins
as if the horns
aren’t already in your backyou burned us
and called it light
but we’re still here
still smolderingwe are the smoke
you tried to silence
the ghosts
you thought would forgetbut we remember
every lash
every theft
every prayer we were forced to choke onand now
we come for you
not with muskets
but memorynot with swords
but truth sharp enough
to bleed
what’s left of your soulthis is divine fire
this is judgment
this is a funeral
with no hymns for youmay your churches rot
may your flags fall
may every gold coin
burn a hole through your handsthis is for the children you buried
under your empire
this is for the tongues you cut
and the gods you mockedthis is not forgiveness
this is flame
this is fury
this is THE RECKONINGand it begins
with your name
carved out of history
and left
to bleed.^
TAHU ^
for sh ^ dow
for the bones beneath your streets

^

INSIDE THE BEAST:
A WARNING TO BOTH WORLDS

you don’t live in their shadows
but i have—
twenty years and more
inside their temples
their homes
their liesi made their people dance
felt their eyes cut deep
heard their silence scream truthto my people—
this is why i speak fire
why your ears can’t hear the whole story
why you don’t see what i carry
because most never live inside the beast
and few survive itto the colonizer—
i walked your ground
wore your skin like armor
learned your cruelty
your weight
your invisible chainsi am the witness you deny
the voice you fear
the reckoning you refuse to facethis is your reckoning—
your empire burns in my words
your lies fall like ash
your silence breaks like glassthis is my fire
this is my voice
this is the end of your storylisten well—
because i’m the flame that cannot be snuffed

^