Sathyani Kotakadeniya
Visiting cuisines at every hour
Picking from dishes from all around the globe
Calling it food
Do you call it coloured food then?
Yet you have the nerve to say they are not your people.
Threatening to draw borders and expel other cultures
For “those people do not look like me”.
I guarantee you that from head to toe you dress and buy
Clothes for your body and stuff for your homes
A collaborative effort from around the globe
When we coexist, can you opt us out?
Can you claim those lands
and call it yours,
When you know, there were inhabitants of those lands
long before you were born?
We are merely tenants of planet Earth,
Lucky to have a home.
I dare you to take race, greed, and power to your grave
Worms will eat your decaying body
The remainder of the carcass will rot away into the soil
Will worms choose between black, brown, yellow, and white then?
Remember this darling:
Death does not discriminate!
-Sathyani Kotakadeniya
Sathyani Kotakadeniya is a law and psychology dual degree student from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia (QUT). Her poetry has appeared in several Australian and overseas magazines and journals such as QUT Glass, QUT Scratch That, The Matchstick-Amnesty International Canada Arts & Lit Magazine, Ovid to Covid-Poetry and Covid and the Tiny Seed Literary Journal. She recently became a finalist in the Oprelle 2021 “Rise Up” Poetry Anthology Contest.