Reality calls me Turkish.
A flat word.
Administrative.
A stamp pressed onto skin
by people who never learned my name.
Online, they shout BIJÎ KURDISTAN,
their profiles wrapped in Kurdish surnames
like borrowed coats.
They wear the language loudly,
comfortably,
as if it never burned their mouths.
They say the words easily.
I carry them heavily.
I live in the gap
between what I am
and what I’m allowed to be called.
Between the passport
and the pulse.
They celebrate an identity
that cost me silence,
that taught my family to whisper,
that learned to survive by not being seen.
So when they say bijî,
I hear prove it.
When they say brother,
I hear distance.
I am Kurdish
without the safety of saying it.
Kurdish
without applause.
Kurdish
even when reality refuses the word.
And maybe that’s the truest form—
to belong
without permission,
to exist
without being recognized,
to carry a homeland
that others can shout
but only some of us
have to live.