MY STORY
My story started long before you got here.
Your grandmother walked on me
Thatha ate under that mango tree
You grew up here.
It all started in a symbiotic symphony.
I am a piece of land on this earth.
I was always alive.
Flying birds, and happy trees
I wrote poems with my streams.
I have fed you for years
with everything your body needs.
Ajji
She knew.
What I gave in love, she always took
She started her mornings with my ragi, and I was free.
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But time passed, as it always does.
They polished the rice I gave
and wanted all my mangoes to look the same.
Nonchalantly, the chemicals came.
They made me produce more than I could.
Now, there were traces of poison in your food.
My soil turned into an avid playground.
My grass was uprooted, earthworms cried, rivers died.
And the hummingbird stopped coming by.
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Of the many that left me, a few looked back.
And some returned.
Leaving behind AC offices
the rush of generations and plastic flowers
Trailblazing
their way home,
someone came back for me.
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Together, we forge a world that was always ours
and the heart inside me is beating again.
New thoughts rooted in old ways
We have built something beautiful today.
Cows grazing, hens pecking
All the creatures I love have a place
and livelihoods for everyone who came.
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