My daughter asks, Do I check off the ‘other’ box if Daddy is white?

I want to tell her,
Your great-grandfather hid in a pile
of hay and animal shit.
Your blood is in the soil of Zile,
vilayet of our dead family.
Virgins threw themselves into rivers
with stones in their pockets.
I have dreams of the near-dead,
flies dotting their faces,
piled bodies
empty meal sacs fluttering beneath
an indifferent sky.

Old men tell stories of buried churches now.
The ghosts of nenehs cry in my ear.
My strange brown hair, my summer skin
quickens a man’s pulse.
We erected cathedrals smote to dust.
I watched a girl raped in a Genocide movie
when I was eight.
Generational trauma has 96.8 million posts on Tiktok.
Erdogan is sucking off the Three Pashas and Donald Trump
while desert bones have turned to clay.
Hrant Dink was shot in the head.

Check off the box.
Check off that
goddamned
box.