You have these cheeks
And small tree trunk eyes
People notice your face
Connected to a body that is built for hard labor
You know this, your thick hands and trunk and leg roots burrow down
Your body was built to do the work that has to be done.
Remember when you went searching
A homeland not your own
Searching for others like you
Big cheeks, small eyes
Before you came to be called white
Before the forced colonialism
The starvation. You lost your language and your dancing and your home
And then the internal colonialism
A pallid choice
To fit in with oppressors,
To survive.
But that's not survival, not really
Because I saw the green earth that is female
And I saw druid caves and magic
And I know the missing part,
The part that was both stolen and rejected
Desperately tiring, recreated ghost
Trading our humanity for white culture built on blood and lies
We are the shells of our ancestors
And somehow, we still can't find our face
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