I was born in your heartbeat before you had fingernails.
Before your toes had taken shape.
Passed down from your elders.
Passed down from the moon and the morning sun.
I took root in your mouth.
Breathed life into the soft space behind the teeth, between gum and memory.
I lived in laughter, in hunting cries, in the spaces between the stars.
I was the map that guided you through the land.
Akuntsu.
We were born other, but not lesser.
The leaves beneath our feet. The same leaves.
The sky above our heads. The same sky.
Before you, there had been more. So many more.
You worshipped me not as a god, but as your own blood.
As one.
Konibu taught you well.
You carved me into the thatch of your roof.
Symbols of remembrance. Of love.
So much love.
You painted me on your body in achiote at the ceremonies,
giving thanks for fruit, for water, for the promise of more days to come.
And all of you felt the colours of the earth through my eyes.
You knew what it was to live because we shared a cadence.
As one.
At night, you dreamed in the silver of my tongue.
Until the men came
with their paper dreams
and golden bullets.
You did not hear them when they cried, ‘Kneel’.
You did not know the glint of metal. Cold and uneven.
You had known only the softness of wood and the brittleness of bone.
The simplicity of stone.
The materials of our lives.
We did not know the sound of power.
It stopped voice in its head before it had the chance to speak.
The blood of man spilled across the land.
Then there were seven.
They did not speak. They pronounced.
They drew lines using the blood of our people.
Named the soil as their own.
Theirs for the taking.
They proclaimed us illegitimate.
As if names were ever theirs to invoke.
As if their strength was born of shrapnel and steel,
not from the will of the heart.
Then there were 3.
How could we have known?
The wind that shaped us had never brought us such cold.
Such indifference.
How could we have known?
They were all gone but you. You and I.
I hid in your mouth, then.
For survival. For truth.
You spoke aloud only to the trees.
To the wind.
To the bones of our dead.
In the night, we were alone.
Crying into the dark.
And still, I answered.
Always I answered.
I was always here with you.
And I am here now.
Watching us die.
Your last breath, my own.
I watch your ribs rise and fall.
Wonder what thoughts now,
as we say goodbye.
Ururú.
They burned our bodies.
Charred skin for the want of wood.
They buried our homes.
Hiding their shame.
They silenced us.
They will search for me in archives.
In glossaries. In classrooms.
They will not find me there.
Akuntsu.
Speak my name.
We were not yours to erase.
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