Where
I come from
Isn’t
it funny how we pin our home
to
a bunch of rocks and piles of sand
and
concrete blocks
as
though the rotting bones of sweaty ancestors
gives
us purer meaning. I guess there might be truth
in
it. Everyone must cling
to
something, I suppose
and
rock is more stable than feeling.
But
I come from a country that staked a flag
in
every patch of land it found
as
if it meant something, as if rock
meant
more than the red
they
tread into the dirt with heavy army boots. Forgive me
if
I choose not to build my home
from
rock or bone, but I hope you know
it
all dissolves, eventually.
As
long as I keep breathing the feeling follows.
I
am 5,000 miles from the city I was born in, but I come from
blood
that floats in wells of thoughts. I hear them now─
the
voices and I know that I am lucky
to
know I am loved, to come from wherever I want
and
to still know my home.
Great. I think this plays so well with the content we've been reading, and I've thought and felt similar things in terms of my relation to this history. It's so sad and striking to remember that these places we feel comfortable in were places that our country "staked a flag" in and "tread" with "heavy army boots" --- It feels so important not to forget this, even as we feel comfortable and happy in the places we come from. ... I like how your poem speaks of a desire to forge a new history, where you will not "build [your] home / from rock or bone." I love how that phrasing reminds us of the pure grotesqueness of that history, at the same time as it tries to move forward from it.
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