You Won’t Get Me
to the colonizers, the charmers, the manipulators
Ey, colonizers –
you won’t get me.
You may have rewritten maps,
but not my memory.
You may have renamed cities,
but not my soul.
You got to some of my kin.
Whispered your lies in their ears,
taught them to mistrust their mother tongues,
offered them flags in exchange for silence.
And some…
they drank your poison with smiling mouths.
They forgot where their grandmothers are buried.
They speak your language better than their own.
They call it progress.
You call it peace.
I call it betrayal.
But me?
You won’t get me.
I see your hands behind every compliment.
I hear the chains behind your sweet voices.
You come with paperwork and smiles,
but I was raised by women who smelled danger
before it had a name.
You won’t get me.
Not through education.
Not through your NGOs.
Not through your “inclusive projects”
that erase us while pretending to uplift.
I walk with ghosts behind me.
Mountains inside me.
The names you tried to bury
rise in my chest
like thunder.
So no,
you won’t get me.
You may have some of them,
but I?
I remain.
Unbought.
Unbroken.
Unassimilated.