“Forced Marches in Gold Robes”
They wore silk,
but their hands were stained.
They wrote laws,
but buried tongues beneath them.
They spoke of empire,
of divine order,
but marched us
through deserts,
through silence,
through loss.
They had the power
because they held the blade
and called it order.
Because they held your village
and called it a province.
Because they broke your name
and called it a census.
They were disgusting
not because they were strong,
but because they made you small
and smiled doing it.
They dressed like sultans,
but ruled like thieves.
They moved whole bloodlines
like livestock.
They packed prophets into exile.
They turned grandmothers
into whispers.
And when you ask why—
why they had that power—
remember:
they did not inherit it.
They took it.
By sword, by fear,
by forgetting who we were.