They ripped dawn from our wrists,
branded us cargo before language could save us.
Our mother’s scream was the final currency
before iron erased our names.
We were priced in silence,
auctioned for no kobo
as if a human life were zero,
as if breath were surplus.
The sea choked our prayers,
ships groaned on stacked bones.
Darkness taught us arithmetic:
how flesh becomes figures
when greed writes history.
Sold for no kobo,
yet paid for in blood.
Empires stand on our unpaid dead,
their riches swollen with stolen futures.
The ocean keeps record.
The soil keeps record.
Sugarcane, cotton, tobacco
each field speaks the names
they tried to bury.
I speak for the stolen mouths.
We were never nothing.
What they sold for no kobo
was invaluable
and it is still rising.
©️ Dibang Mary
Dec 17, 2025
Dec 17, 2025 at 4:11 PM UTC
They ripped dawn from our wrists,
branded us cargo before language could save us.
Our mother’s scream was the final currency
before iron erased our names.
We were priced in silence,
auctioned for no kobo
as if a human life were zero,
as if breath were surplus.
The sea choked our prayers,
ships groaned on stacked bones.
Darkness taught us arithmetic:
how flesh becomes figures
when greed writes history.
Sold for no kobo,
yet paid for in blood.
Empires stand on our unpaid dead,
their riches swollen with stolen futures.
The ocean keeps record.
The soil keeps record.
Sugarcane, cotton, tobacco
each field speaks the names
they tried to bury.
I speak for the stolen mouths.
We were never nothing.
What they sold for no kobo
was invaluable
and it is still rising.
©️ Dibang Mary