You Cannot Take My Name

Aren't we all a series of numbers

Collated in a giant database

Which may or may not be wallpapering

The dining rooms of billionaire abodes?

/

If they had their way,

We'd all have serial codes

Inscribed on our foreheads

To be scanned for social credit.

/

11 million people were deprived of names

As well as their lives and identities.

All for the crimes of existing too loudly,

Too ornately full of purpose.

/

You can paste over names of history

And chisel letters off steelwork frames.

But you cannot remove history

From the web-weaves of time

Or from the minds of historians.

/

You might take away the things

That keep me alive.

You might take away my education,

My freedom to work,

My freedom to choose,

My freedom to refuse.

/

But you cannot take my name.

I will not permit you to erase me

Like a redacted phrase in a document.

You will not rename me

To make my dehumanization

More convenient and palatable.

/

You will not redefine me

As something malicious

Merely because you misunderstand

My power to be who I am.