Why Should I Think My Identity Is Surgical?
Why should I believe
my identity is something surgical—
stitched together
by foreign hands
on sterile tables
under the light of empire?
Why should I call it normal
that I am made of cuts and sutures,
boundaries drawn across my skin
by men who never knew my name?
They carved the world
and called it order.
They stitched nations together
with threads of blood,
and told us this was peace.
And now they want me to say:
“I am from here, not there.
This is my side. That is not.
This is my flag. That is forbidden.”
But my soul is older
than their maps.
My roots are not surgical.
They are buried deep,
where no empire ever looked.
I do not belong to a line
on a piece of paper.
I belong to the wind
that crossed those borders
before they existed.
I do not accept their stitches
as sacred.
They are scars,
not salvation.
Let them keep their scalpels.
Let them guard their fences.
I will keep my wildness,
my fluid grief,
my borderless memory.
Because I was whole
before they cut me.