How.
Lawless lands
lawless hands
that rule these lawless lands.
Not monsters.
Still human.
Which is worse.
Because it is the air
that does the damage.
An environment that teaches the fist before the word,
that rewards resentment as survival skill,
that turns institutions into predators
and people into rumours of themselves.
Corruption is not a scandal here.
It is infrastructure.
Bribery is not moral failure.
It is navigation.
Every person learns early:
be hard or be consumed.
Be sharp or be swallowed.
The country eats its own
and calls it upbringing.
Survival stops being a choice.
It becomes law.
Whatever one has to do
becomes mandatory.
I went back to my dad's country
and my body did not know where to stand.
My chest held turmoil for him
like a second heart,
finally understanding that love surviving there
is not sentimental
it is miraculous.
I do not understand how he longs to return so often
and yet I do
because the word home
does not obey reason.
Home is not safety.
Home is gravity.
What do you say
to someone whose currency is hope
and their own hands.
Who cannot rely on anything above or below,
only objects,
only what they can grip.
People walk with machetes in daylight (not everywhere, just where I was)
not to threaten
but to pre-empt the future.
Protection against something
that has not even arrived yet.
This is normal.
This is morning.
This is how streets breathe.
For many this is not a story.
It is childhood.
It is muscle memory.
My ex girlfriends, both of them,
raised in places that sound fictional to me,
places that would break my voice
before my bones.
And yet they carry calm
like inheritance,
patience like a second language.
They exist
and that alone
is a miracle they cannot pause to admire.
Inheritance should not feel like danger
but on my dad's side
it is a contested land,
a wound disguised as legacy.
A place where being related
is enough to be targeted.
The only shield
between inevitable collapse
is my dad
and his mother.
Two bodies holding back history.
What in the hell am I going to do
in a land where everything
I was taught to reject
is encouraged.
I do not have that dog in me.
I do not know how to sharpen myself
without losing myself.
What am I going to do.
What are they going to do.
What are they going to do.
How do they survive.
What am I going to do.
This is not a question.
It is a pulse.
It is the sound of blood
asking the ground
whether it will open or hold.
How.
Also, just to specify. Language like "bribery" and other westernized words that are used to attribute associations to actions are also skewed by the mind or mine that has been colonized by living in the nation I do. Words that we consider to be mischievous like bribery, machetes, killing, and corruption are really just synonyms for survival. Survival. I am not absolving, just acknowledging.
