for the ignorant

•∞•

They burned down the churches first;
bombed the mosques,
tipped candles in temples,
graffitied the charities, because
they ignorantly believed that,
without a shrine,
God would have closed the gates to Earth
in order to avoid the flames,
which licked the inside of our painted gold pillars and brick walls,
that holy water could not douse.

(You all are like families yearning for home,
they thought,
so we'll incinerate the houses first).

Then they tore at our clothes;
clawed through the rips of our jeans,
tugging at the hair beneath the scarves on our heads,
kicking in the heels of our shoes,
and when we were immodest and bared for them with watery eyes and feeble pleads,
they laughed roughly, and stripped our flesh.

(You all have teased us far enough,
they thought,
so we'll not be taken as a joke).

These privileged, the ones who believe they
were the only verdict in lands of criminals,
felt the minorities so dramatic that they
cut our tongues,
severed our hands from our body,
spilled poison into the mouths of our babes,
and when we were no longer independent,
like humans can be to the ragged teeth of a white shark,
they jammed a stake through our chests.

(You all have tried to bewitch us,
they thought,
so, like demons, we will tear your hearts out).

We have learned to pray with
our palms concealing the words our lips whisper,
a bowed head in a deception of submission,
because while they have taken so much that our debt was insurmountable--
unpaid in the bones of the ones they stood to get to the top of the chain of discriminated--
they cannot take our prayers,
for that was all we had left
in this unjust world.

(And then I stop and ask myself, If it were not them prosecuting us, would we have done it to them?).

•∞•