Petals from exiled roots
They ask me where I’m from
like it’s a checkbox,
a drop-down menu,
a language I should select without hesitation,
as if history were tidy,
and belonging came preloaded.
I pause.
Because my answer has footnotes.
Because my name carries dust
from roads my body never walked
but my blood still knows.
I say Armenian,
then comes the follow-up, inevitable,
polite as a checkpoint:
“Yes, but where were you born?”
As if birth certificates outrank blood,
as if geography cancels inheritance.
So I answer again,
layered now — country, city, accent,
my identity footnoted,
my belonging split into clauses.
Most days I’m steady.
My voice doesn’t shake.
I wear the word like armor,
like silk spun from survival.
Other days, doubt finds me.
When my tongue betrays me,
forgets a word it once knew,
borrows another from a language
that raised me instead.
Consonants collide.
Vowels migrate.
I sound like everywhere and nowhere at once.
They hear the mix and hesitate.
So do I.
Because the march never ended,
it only changed rhythm.
Once it was feet on dirt roads,
now it’s questions.
Forms.
Explanations.
A lifelong procession toward something I’ve always been.
Still, I walk.
And from roots displaced by force, petals insist on blooming,
identity in motion,
memory in color,
beauty born from refusal.
Petals from exiled roots.
I am still here.
