I feel the heat of the fire against my face,

it is life or death depending on where you stand.

Born of stolen land with the name of a foreign man who took from me what he lacked from his beginnings.

Their plan was to hope I forget but my scars aren’t on the surface, they will always bleed internally.

My tears run dry and I hear the echoes of why we weren’t meant to be here.

But you see me right?

One choice has changed the face of our fate but I can’t contemplate when they say, that it was written to be this way.

If your freedom laid in fire would you burn to be free?

I feel the heat of the fire against my face,

it is life or death depending on where I stand.

I fight for our journey to not define us.

For my children to see me for who I am, to heal from my scars as I heal from my mothers and those before her.

I fight for some words to never be spoken, like a forgotten curse from a spent alchemist.

I fight and I fight but no battle can be won by one.

I grow in your shadow.

I feel the heat of the fire against my face.

I stand with my kin from a time past.

They feel my joy and hope, my pain and sorrow.

They thirst for freedom, for those who came before were never found ashore because their life was for more than grieving.

I feel the heat of the fire against my face,

it is life or death depending on where we stand.