I Am an Azeri-Derived Kurd
They say I am contradiction—
a foot in fire,
a hand in stone,
the mountain and the plain
arguing in my chest.
I am an Azeri-derived Kurd.
Not torn,
but threaded.
Woven from winds
that carried both sorrow and song
across borders drawn in foreign ink.
My tongue remembers
both lullabies:
one soft with Turkic curves,
the other rough with Kurdish truth.
I speak them both
and yet belong to neither campfire fully—
so I light my own.
My veins do not lie.
They hum with the rage of Dersim,
the ache of Karabakh,
the lull of Lake Urmia
where ancestors whispered
through reed and rebellion.
I am not confused.
I am carved.
By history,
by exile,
by the stubborn pride
of peoples who never asked for permission
to survive.
Call me what you will.
Azeri. Kurd. Hybrid.
But know this—
I carry a homeland
no empire could hold.
And it speaks
in a voice
older than flags.