Some people stare,
searching for a Judas bone,
but all they can find
are the stems of your arms,
the sleek plunge of femur
into socket.

​

These are the usual things,
and why shouldn’t they be?
You were not a provision
of armistice or treaty.
You were not born to be
nation or diaspora.

​

The love that made you
was simple as the sounds
at breakfast: clink of pan
on stove, scraping-back of chair.
No slave ever rocked
inside the boat of your hips,
no explorer pried open
an African river.

​

They say the ancestors
reside in a sacred grove.
Your homeland is wherever
you stand. If the gaze lingers,
it’s on your spine, straighter
than the fence lines
at Gettysburg.