Have you ever had to prove
who you are before you
can buy a ticket, a cup
of coffee, a hard roll?
Weren’t we just saying:
why is it so hard to understand
the need to object to the depiction
of our pain by others?
This is not about abstraction:
history as a thing we can talk
about, freedom and the the so-
called purity of rights.
No one should get to decide
but the ones who’ve bled
in the trenches that this wasn’t
a skirmish but a war.
No one gets to decide
but the one who’s suffered
what color is its closest
approximation.