Bleeding Snow Poem by Tenzin Tsewang

My gods are not defeated— they are only quiet,
waiting between two breaths
to strike in silence.

Our mountain is dotted with names
foreign to our tongue,
forced to forget herself.
Though she is scarred, her snow bleeding into the stone,
she remains unbowed—a jagged dare against the sky.

They claim our land was empty.
But empty hearts do not sing.
Empty feet do not synchronize.
Our ancestors danced on ice sheets,
chiseled fortresses from the living rock,
and breathed the dry winds that scrape the lungs like flint.

The hot wind flutters in our inhalation,
piercing the marrow of the exiled,
igniting an unsettled pain.
Foreign tongues—Hello, Namaste, Bonjour, Guten Tag—
clutter the air like a thick fog
until no direction can be trusted.

We move like yaks: stubborn, heavy, undefeated.
And our gods watch,
silent and deathless.
Pala said, 'We are like them—thriving in the thin air where others choke.' Our anger and prayer are braided together,
a knot refusing erasure.

If they call this defeat,
they do not know us.
They do not know our gods.
They do not know the altitude of our spirit.
They do not know the depth of our long winter.

We wait for spring.
We wait for the mountain to speak her name again.
Our gods will rise from the silence.