“The Spaniard”
The Spaniard speaks
of Sardinian blood,
as if an island’s whisper
makes him kin
to deserts he’s never crossed,
to prayers he’s never heard
in a mother tongue not his.
He says,
“We have Sardinian DNA—
so we, too, are West Asian.”
But no, Spaniard.
You are not born of drought and fire,
not carved by exile,
not sung by winds
that pass over Zagros and beyond.
You are olive groves,
conquests,
cathedrals in gold.
Not the cracked earth of forgotten names,
not the ink of our lost scripts.
You wear fragments
like ornaments,
but you have not bled for them.
You have not wept
for a homeland
they keep taking
with words like yours.
Spaniard,
your maps do not include
the ache that makes us.