Flower Garden

The colonizers write poetry about flowers.

I want to, too.

Instead I begin to write about rebellion,

about children throwing rocks at tanks,

minutes before flattening like daisies in the winter.

Colonizers write about the moon.

I, too, want to write about the moon,

but my people cannot see the moon from their prison cells.

I wish S would stop texting me “Happy Ramadan.”

I wish A would stop texting me “Happy Christmas.”

I know that I am too American because every time I walk into a room, something dies.

Someone dies.

A flower wilts.

The freedom we have now stings my tongue, as it will soon sting my wrists.

I smell ashes.

Have you burned something, O great land of the free?

Have you snip, snip, snipped someone away?

Have you blown away the dandelion?

Their seeds still blow in the breeze.

We are not forgotten.

We are not monsters.

We are not terrorists.

We are results.