The Settlers Ask Where are you from?

when trying to pin my shaded skin to their collection of hides,

but I want to flip and further the question: where

are you from, and why don’t you go back?

because there is privilege in knowing one place

where ancestors are buried and where home is

that the mixed-race and displaced don’t have.

So we settle in the comfortable and place our hearts

in recently fabricated hearths, tasting ash

from brush fires we set to cleanse,

but really meant to clear, in our food and on our tongues.

Every day is Ash Wednesday in the colonies. I answer

Where are you from, and why don’t you go back?

with “I pay a voluntary land tax,” making the impossible-

to-answer question, and the ash in my mouth, palatable,

especially when, in the Philippines or England,

I could feel comfortable until someone spoke, could taste 

the ghosts of the familiar on my tongue 

but not in my stomach.