It is easy enough

It is easy enough
to pretend I am not a product
of revolution, that my parents and their parents
didn’t flee their homes for

me to sit behind
those laminated desks and recite
my allegiance to a striped and
speckled flag.

It is easy enough
to sit in the kitchen with my in-laws
and listen to them reminisce
about their son’s youth,
his one and only childhood home.

No one dares ask me about
the motels and the border crossings
the language barriers and the cognates
upon which I relied. The Fingilisi.

It is easy enough
to sit like a fawn, still, and smile at those
across the conference table than to
hurl my history out into the room like an omen.

The work of my lineage
remains hostage in the tired
marrow of this body,
this ocean of blood,

an energy,
an ever-present
roiling

beneath the scabs,
a beast,
heaving
with one eye open.

[by Sarah Esmi // published in Rogue Agent Issue 96; Spring 2023]