You Spoke in the English Tongue
and laughed, but I heard the war beneath your words.
You said,
“What if I held a gun to your head?”
Then you laughed.
Not from humor,
but from power.
That laugh—
meant to unnerve me.
Meant to turn threat into joke.
Meant to say:
“You don’t matter, but your reaction does.”
You spoke in the English tongue,
polished, practiced,
like a salesman of fear.
But I’ve lived with guns that never show.
Papers that deny me.
Doors that don’t open.
And rooms where laughter like yours
echoes like sirens.
You laughed.
But it wasn’t funny.
It was familiar.
It was colonial.
It was the sound of
comfort wearing a weapon.
You think I’ll forget that moment?
You think I’ll file it under “banter”?
You think the world hasn’t heard
enough jokes like that
before a silence followed?
I do not flinch anymore.
I do not laugh with wolves.
If you ever held that gun—
real or rhetorical—
you’d find your hands shaking,
because I am not made of fear.
You laughed.
But I spoke back.
And now the world will hear me,
louder than your joke ever reached.