Day 13 514,
and no Kurdish in sight.
The calendar screams numbers,
not songs, not words,
not the lullabies of my people.
Others are speaking my tongue,
but not myself.
Their voices carry
what I was denied,
their breath holds
what my silence lost.
I count years like prison bars,
each tick a reminder:
thirty-seven winters,
thirty-seven summers,
yet no Kurdish dawn
breaks the German sky.
Day 13 514 —
a life measured,
but not lived in my tongue.