Miscellaneous

Of various types or from different sources,
That’s what I’ve been called in your history courses,
Nipmuc, Narragansett, Webster/Dudley,
I have the names for these pieces of me,
These labels have not mattered before present time,
But now within your structures I am being confined,
Where are these borders that seem to me imagined,
For us, during some seasons, far travel happened,
I fight for my voice, for the truth to be spoken,
But I have been silenced and our traditions stolen and broken,
We are survivors of an ongoing genocide,
It’s a miracle, every single descendant still alive,
We were welcoming and open, we have always loved,
The evidence in clear in the centuries of tri-racial blood,
But in this system, I am only given one,
Miscellaneous he said,
She’s a miscellaneous one.

Courtney Akbar, 2024