“I Am Not the Greek from Laconia”
I am not the Greek from Laconia,
where you see dictionary entries
about laconic grunts—
dry responses,
war-born silences,
and the art of never showing pain.
Don’t look for me
in the pages that define restraint
as elegance.
Don’t mistake my silence
for simplicity,
or my endurance
for consent.
I am not carved in marble.
I am not a lesson in brevity.
I am not your clean line
or cold philosophy.
I am Kurdish.
Not your footnote.
Not your fading border.
Not your exile in brackets.
I am the voice they tried to bury
beneath regimes,
beneath shame,
beneath names that were never mine.
The Bulgarian might be one of them—
eyes that flick too fast,
a silence too familiar.
Not all ghosts come from myth.
Some walk beside you
and smile like friends,
but carry echoes
that never meant you well.
But I only stand with the Bulgarian Jews.
Not for history's sake,
but because they, too,
have known what it means
to exist in defiance
and survive without applause.
I am the echo that breaks the form,
the scream behind the stifled grin.
I am the history you won’t footnote—
the warmth, the fire,
the fury that lingers
long after your sentence ends.
So no—
I am not the Greek from Laconia.
My response is not
your laconic grunt.
It is thunder through mountain bones,
a river breaking its dam,
the sound of survival
when you tried to name me
without asking who I am.