36

If you ask me if I’m fluent,
I’d say I’m fluent in a rhetoric that wasn’t
on my mother’s tongue.

This city is filled with immigrant hearts
those in search of kinder faces.
A woman once asked me where the post office was
and in the midst of her broken English, I realized
how smart she must be in Spanish.

I’m sorry that you’ve come from the ends of this earth
in search of softer soil
stayed up late, Rosetta Stone
that now, you can read
an online forum people who don’t want you.
This nation is not a hotel
we’re a home
and you’re welcome here, always.

They can’t teach you resilience in a classroom
a mother leaves her entire life behind
to hope for a better future of her child
(who hasn’t even been born yet)
truly a sacrifice, immeasurable.

If we spend our days closing our borders to our brothers and sisters
if we are all molded of dirt from the same earth
when it rains and we all turn to mud,
will we know, even then, where we each end and begin?