Default Title - The World Is My Own

Dirges in the dark

Perhaps someday
When I visit
The language will come easy
The "r"s will roll effortlessly
The words will run smoothly from head to tongue.
But not yet.
Not now.
Not this time.
No, this time my language is slow..
My "r"s stall, sticking in my mouth.
My words fail, not translating and then, once they do, catching in my throat.
Sometime I will be free.
This time I am trapped.
Some day I will be local.
This time I am tourist.
In some world I am native.
In this world I am foreign.
Foreign in her own country, who ever heard of that?
They had.
Heard stories. Met people. Seen wanderers.
They knew.
Knew the confusion, the confliction, the unbearable, heartbreaking questions and unknowing.
Of not knowing who I was.
Of needing to know who I am.
History of ancestors buried.
Soon it would be cremated with my father.
First he must learn.
He must tell me.
First he must stop running, carrying us away.
Then I must turn and face it. He cannot carry all the weight.
To be foreign in one's own country.
To reject the one that fits.
Or, perhaps, to allow it to reject you.
We will learn. We will go back. We will see our land. We will be at home, and we will be at peace.
All of my siblings and friends.
We will run home.
We will march home.
We will flock home and
We will race home
We will find home.
We will see home and
We will touch home. But
What is home?
We do not yet know home.
We must find it yet.

Here is the cradle resting between American and Mexican.
It is gringa and Chicana.
Mostly guera and pocha.
But really just plain American.
Or Irish, I suppose.
With the hair that changes in the light.
I could mourn for that lost lineage as well.

So no matter which way I turn, or what path I take
I find heritage lost in storms and earthquakes.
I see my past erased. I see it torn and smeared and coffee spilled on my case file.
I see my past fade. How will I know who I am?
How can I ever know