Finding Answers

think of
how many countries
live within my country,
contradictions juxtaposed inch after inch,
how may ancestors have grumbled
and mutated their way into my blood,
that fingertip pressed into your machine
could have been a grasshopper or a sullen tree,
how many moods and how many words
make up the untruths that have unravelled
over so many lines and years,
still you ask me with a straight face,
who I am and where I am from,
I push my passport through that slot
behind which you are trapped,
and I want to tell you
I didn’t have brown skin till
I held a moon kissed hand ,
I didn’t have an identifying mole
till the night we found it in the rain,
I didn’t know my surname
till a woman with curly hair and kind eyes
taught me to talk, feeding me salted rice and curd,
I didn’t own my name
till I heard her whisper in a strange, guttural tongue,
sounds that softened her eyes, that once,
but on either side of toughened glass
keeping you in, keeping me out,
lets play our game of inanities,
why are you here, you ask,
what is the purpose of your visit,
think now, how shall I answer,
where shall I begin?