They call it bribery
because the word hunger
would indict them.
They call it corruption
because survival sounds too honest
when it passes through their mouths.
They call it machetes
and not tools,
not harvest,
not the long memory of hands
learning how to cut a future
out of an unwilling earth.
Language arrives first,
uniform pressed,
clipboard clean,
already knowing who is guilty.
Before the act,
before the need,
before the choice that was not a choice.
Words are not mirrors.
They are borders.
A bribe is only a bribe
if the state pretends it fed you.
If the law pretends it protected you.
If history pretends it did not already steal
everything else.
What they call killing
is sometimes refusal.
Sometimes interruption.
Sometimes the last argument left
when every other sentence
has been erased.
They teach us that morality is universal
but only enforce it
where survival looks unfamiliar.
The same act
wears a different passport
depending on who performs it.
A corporation exploits.
A community corrupts.
A nation defends itself.
A people riot.
The language knows
who it was written for.
Colonisation did not only take land.
It took verbs.
It took the right to describe oneself
without already being sentenced.
We inherit this grammar.
We speak it fluently
and then wonder
why our mouths feel dirty.
Why every explanation
sounds like a confession.
Why survival must apologise.
I am not absolving.
I am refusing the lie
that harm is only harm
when it is committed by the hungry.
I am naming the sleight of hand
where greed dresses as policy
and survival is forced
to wear an orange jumpsuit.
There are voices that do not reach microphones.
They speak in actions instead.
They speak in bending rules
that were never bent toward them.
They speak in taking
what was already taken first.
And history calls them criminals
so it does not have to call itself
responsible.
If language were honest,
it would tremble before speaking.
If language were just,
it would ask who wrote the law
before asking who broke it.
But language is loyal
to power.
So we must write
where the dictionary refuses to look.
We must carve space
for meanings that did not survive translation.
We must let survival speak
without handcuffs.
Not to sanctify.
Not to excuse.
But to finally tell the truth
without permission.
