Basarabia, My Blood

for the Republic of Moldova, for those who remember

I was born from a whisper between empires,
in a land sewn with wheat, but reaped in silence.
Where the earth still holds the weight of boots and hooves,
and every stone remembers a name lost to the wind.

My cradle was carved from old oak and lullabies—
my mother sang doine with salt on her tongue,
while my father watched the horizon,
as if freedom might walk home someday from the East.

We are a people of in-between—
between languages, between borders,
between forgetting and never being allowed to.
But our soul? It has always spoken in the language of the land.

We dance not just for joy,
but to shake loose the chains of those before us.
Our hands still braid corn and memories.
Our elders speak in proverbs,
as if truth must be wrapped in poetry to survive.

The shepherd’s flute rises in the dusk—
not just music, but mourning.
A cry from the ribs of the hills,
a hymn for every village burned or buried,
for every child who learned history from silence.

And yet—
we are not just pain.

We are festivals that bloom even in famine,
bread that’s shared even when there’s barely any left.
We are sarmale and prayers,
Mărțișor and mourning,
cathedrals of wood and faith.

You cannot conquer a people
who plant hope in their fields each spring.
Who name their children after saints and seasons.
Who remember.

Basarabia breathes in me
like an old song that aches to be sung.
And if I am ever far—
know this:

I am never lost.
I carry my country in my chest—
like the lonely shepherd carries the mountain wind:
clear, proud, eternal.

by Onnaya