We are Water | By Lydia Armstrong

We are rock because they won’t let us be water.

Cracked like the parched mouths of our children,

Water flows and carves scars in our faces like prison bars,

Like the grooves left in mountains by rain on its way to green valleys,

We are mountains.

We are rigid because they won’t let us be soft.

Our peaks are shaped by the winds of oppression,

Barbed by the resistance like knives sharpened against the things stolen from us,

Water stolen from the earth beneath us,

We are earth.

We are thirsty because they won’t let us drink.

Water courses our veins but escapes us,

Quickly on its way to the privileged while we erode in its path.

Rivers diverted by the rich, replaced by wells of crude oil as the powerful rape our lands,

We are power.

We are rising because they won’t let us sleep.

Climbing skyward like a totem,

We crouch feet to brother’s shoulder made singular in our height.

Channels connecting poisoned pipes of Flint, Michigan to polluted Dakota rice fields,

We are connected.

We are united because we won’t let us go lonely.

Whitewashed histories sweep stolen lands like foaming tides,

We are buried beneath the surf.

We comb beaches for the bones of our ancestors embedded in limestone like fossils,

We are fossils.

We are stitched in the soil because we won’t let us forget.

Sand sifting through our fingers clinks like coins in colonizer ears,

Rivers turned to currency, made to separate like interstates lassoing Black neighborhoods,

Why have they made this of water,

We are water.