
12/06/2025
"They told me to go back to where I came from."
I bent down, placed my hand on the earth, and whispered:
"I never left."
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I come from the first fires,
where stories were told beside rivers
that still remember our names.
I come from footprints pressed into the soil
long before your maps gave this land new names.
I come from cedar smoke and the cry of the hawkβ
truths older than fences, borders, and nations.
You ask me where Iβm from,
but it is you who arrived laterβ
building walls on a land that once knew none.
My homeland is not a point on your compass.
It is the breath of the mountain in morning mist,
the stillness of pine before the first snow,
the rhythm of hoofbeats across wide-open plains.
So I returnβnot in anger,
but in remembrance.
I pitch my tent on your front lawn,
not as defiance,
but as a prayer:
That one day, you too might remember
what it means to belongβ
without needing to possess.