They say

they say

where there are roots, there is power.

But what if I am the topsoil—

all scattered?

What if the ground beneath me

is a borrowed skin

warm in places, but never quite mine?

Slipping into loose alluvium,

never deep enough to anchor

never strong enough to hold?

 

I am a name pronounced differently 

in every mouth that speaks it. 

A tectonic plate

that will never collide into home. 

 

They tell me

and they tell me, again

to walk the right coordinates,

to map myself onto a landscape

drawn before my first breath. 

That I should swear by the latitudes,

trace their meanings into my marrow.

 

Because,

you know

I have been the kind to be lifted by winds,

swirling, dissolving, gone.

Meant to settle anywhere without permission

slipping into the crevices of sidewalks,

into everything unnoticed but necessary.

 

Do not mistake erosion for weakness,

for I have learned to live in the air. 

 

I’m the dust that coats your monuments,

the sediment that clogs your rivers.

I hum in the half-moons of your nails

stick to you in quiet defiances—

 

Like birthmarks from your origin,

I do not leave. 

I am the topsoil

and I am here to stay.