I loathe the word “ethnic cleansing,”
for it implies the land must be cleansed—
of its indigenous people,
as if they are to be wiped away.
But they are the roots,
woven deep,
earth and soul intertwined,
indispensable to one another.
Indigenous people weep
as their trees burn.
The flames consume,
their breath, their life, their very being.
They kiss the soil,
upon return,
lips longing for memory,
for home,
for the pulse of the land
that has long embraced them.
And when the oppressors
forcibly drive them away,
they do not cleanse—
they deprive.
They strip the land
of its friends,
its keepers,
its caretakers,
its kin,
the ones who would have
spent a lifetime tending to it.
In an ephemeral world,
the love that ties them to the land is
an exceptionally eternal one—
one that neither time nor force can end.
