You are not lucky.
As if some cosmic force celebrates each of your golden breaths.
An entity
Marked by milestones,
Marked by your community.
You are not lucky.
Though you wear a cross proudly round your neck every day,
And see the scarved girl that’s your age,
Sneered at by strangers,
As if their contention
With her existence
Is their daily routine
As casual as drinking a cup of lukewarm tea.
You are not lucky.
Though your days have been perfumed
With privilege,
Felt only by those born into
The culture they’re living in.
And you anticipate allowances and freedom and welcome,
Still refuse to grant it to children of corruption
You are not lucky.
And you don’t cling to your culture like a safety blanket,
A haven when uprooted.
Thrown from everything you know and
Have nothing left,
But
The words on your lips,
The dance on your hips,
Music you remember reverberating in each ear,
Days and nights punctuated with prayer.
The certainty of what each season would bring.
Who you would see and how you would do anything
To be around the familiar,
The syllables that you’ve heard from before.
You could even speak yourself.
Perhaps bad luck makes us
The accidental perpetrators,
But bad luck does not make us sit back and take it,
Sit back and watch the faces on our tvs,
Faces in these magazines.
No, you are not lucky,
And you should not be taught so.
Rather, you have been born
Into a society
That protects you through
The systematic hatred of
The opposite of you.
You are not lucky.
You are not lucky
Because you are guilty.
Article 30
You have the right to practise your own culture, language and religion – or any you choose. Minority and indigenous groups need special protection of this right
