Fuck the Colonizer in my Head

Chad and Garrett
tell me the trees don’t speak,
that I’m in psychosis
when I see the wind spirits.
Silently, I count frog bodies
in a dried up stream bed
and wonder if they’re right.
After all, I didn’t grow up
in the mountains of my
grandparents.
I’m afraid of mud
because it will stain my skin,
because it’s soft and wet and
too alive, like me.
I sample it and confirm there
are indeed, not enough of the
correct microbes present.
Did they, too, get sick of the
gloved hands fondling them
and go start their own commune?
Every meeting I walk into,
I count the melanated faces.
I can’t help it, I was
only taught to survey us.
No one questions asphalt
or glass windows;
these post-post-colonial explorers
merely desire the wealth
of Mother’s bleeding heart.
There is something very
rape-y about planting a flag
into the ground without its consent.
They say the extinction is coming,
and by now I’m too
exhausted to care.