Identity crisis

The daily prompts this year are fantastic. Today's optional prompt (or, as I like to refer to it, challenge) is to write a list of all our different layers of identity. We are then to divide all the ways in which we could be described or viewed into two lists: those which make us feel powerful and those which make us feel vulnerable. We are then to write a poem in which one identity from the first list contends or converses with an identity from the second. I don't think I even need to draw up lists. I already know what I want to write about...

Get up!

Stand up 

and fight!

The blood of Vikings

runs through your veins

Your voice should be heard

over land and sea

But I avoid conflict,

I stand in the shadows

of my own annoyance

My lips are often sealed,

while my mind races,

tells me to step up,

stand out

Because that is where you belong,

on the mountaintops of your forefathers,

your head held high

You were born of kings

and not dry leaves

trampled underfoot

You were forged 

in centuries of 

strength,

pride

Get up!

Stand up

and shout!

The blood of a warrior 

runs through your veins