A Gender for a Village
Dear motherland
When can I come home?
I sleep
On a bed
A hundred wars
Away from you.
The air is cold
And there is nowhere to cry.
Dear Motherland,
Did I do you so wrong,
To deserve
This unholy silence-
That I must live
In someone else's truth.
That I must hold my tongue
When I go home.
That I am to embody
A man
That I don't know-
For my siblings’ sake.
Every morning, I wear a different man's face.
Every night, I sleep in a different gender.
Every funeral, I cry in a different language.
Did you forget,
That before the missionaries came
You sashayed about the jungle
Flowers in your hair and beard
In a tapa dress
That fell to your feet.
That you were
motherland
And
fatherland.
A witch
Who spat on the binary.
Did you forget how
How to twist your tongue
The old way?
The way that made missionary blood boil-
The blasphemous way?
Dear Motherland,
I learnt to be quiet.
When the village demands woman,
I give them woman.
When the village demands man,
I give them man.
And when the village doesn't need me,
I go back to my place
In the middle.
I
Will embody
The unholy matrimony
Of man
.And woman
Of tamaloa
And fafine
I will twist my tongue the old way
Whether you like it or not.
Cut steeples down
To humility
Call upon Tagaloa
Bring tectonic destruction-
You will whisper my name
Fearfully in between the pews.
I will bellow an ancient roar
Deafening the congregation,
Oceania, has never known a gender
that bites back quite like this.
The gender that fights back quite like this.
The ancestors will applaud me Samoa.
Can you say the same-
Never forget,
That your pronouns
Were 6 islands
In a constant state of drowning.
You knew my pain
All too well
Dear Motherland,
When I return home,
Sashay about the jungle
With flowers in my hair
And a tapa dress.
Only then will you realize,
That blasphemy
Has always been your legacy.