had a dozen foster parents | ||
tell me to run from my mother’s truth, flee from the tread marks up her arm & shy away from the streets |
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they said ate her alive. | ||
wasn’t until i had rewilded unto the very streets that i recognized that it kept her alive. |
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harm came from the môniyâw men lurking in the alleys asking for something more (like ligament or limb) to wrap their fleshy digits around nehiyawkwe throat squeeze life like pressing orange for juice. |
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most of my mom’s sisters are dead | ||
like her too now— caught in the crosshairs of murdered or missing; |
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their children are working & i make sure to say hello to my cousins, we all picked up our mothers’ work eventually. |
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i have become a regular at the funeral parlour on Hastings. burying parent & child every other week. |
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don’t have tears left once home, save them | ||
for longer nights | ||
remember there are NDN children who need to eat still. |
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i ran onto Main and Hastings cried out in anguish, this place called cold |
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called heartless called monster & maw |
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was never the culprit & the blame was never to be my mother’s or her sisters— |
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rather machines of genocide | ||
placed here by the illegal government voted in by our now neighbours. |
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i’ve found truth: the mythos was fabricated; & there will always be funerals to attend, NDN children to feed. |