a citizen of nowhere is asked once again where they are from

Na h-Innseachean. Heat
to curdle dust.

River. Esk, where we went
wild swimming. Cool, dark, skin.

A city, on our northern shore.
Friable with history,
replete with lobscouse.

The space between. The fragile arch
of a foot, and zameen
chameli underfoot, and the beach
with the footprints.
Neolithic women passed over that sand
like delicate birds
on their way to somewhere else.

Now, here
where the neem outlasts the frost
where they clink chai cups

and say slàinte mhath.

 
Iona Datt Sharma is a British-Indian writer and poet, with an interest in colonised languages. Their first short story collection, Not For Use In Navigation, was published in March 2019.