Tell me, Mother,
What is it like to be cradled by a hundred kin,
To be a child in a village where every face is a reflection of your own?
What is it like to belong so deeply
That love is the air you breathe,
The ground beneath your feet?
Tell me, Father,
What is it like to walk amongst brothers on the red road to school,
Where the dust still holds your father’s careless years?
What is it like to share a wild heart with friends,
And know you are a thread woven deep into the cloth?
Let me tell you, Mother
I have never known a Christmas
where the house overflows with voices,
Where I am wrapped in the tight embrace of family,
In those early childhood years.
The ghosts of a sweeter life speak of cousins I will never know,
Of aunts and uncles who live and die by words on the wind,
And of grandparents whose souls I piece together from faded photographs.
They tell me I will grow old a stranger
To those who once held you as a child.
Let me tell you, Father,
I shuffled into every room, back bent, head bowed,
So they could not see my maligned face.
I didn’t want to be special, Father, only normal,
So when their laughter came, my laughter came too –
To drown out the noise of a young heart breaking.
The wardens of time gone by still thud in my bones,
And remind me that my childhood was not wild and careless,
But one long, bated breath.
And somewhere in this breath
My heart became a small and hidden thing,
So that a broken heart could not be broken once more.
Oh, tell me! What is it like
To know peace as an intimate bedfellow,
And feel the quiet comfort of a soul at ease?
Oh, tell me! What is it like
To say ‘home is where the heart is’,
And not have to search for where the heart is?
And it’s true, I do not know what it is like
To sleep in the rough of a shared mattress,
To know the ache of a stomach full of air.
I have never waved goodbye
To a brother with fear in his eyes,
And watched gunfire and jungle mud
Etch away his youth.
I have never had to choose exile as my only hope,
And watch the shore,
And all the world I have ever known,
Be swallowed by the sea.
But you do not know what it is like
To live under a sky that spits at your existence,
A ground that rejects your footsteps.
You do not know what it is like
To carry the weight of a lineage
And feel it snap in your two hands.
And you cannot know what it is like
To search your sister’s eyes
And beg that the world has not taught her
The same lessons it taught you.
And so I walk this lonely path,
A path whose stones holds no one’s past but mine.
My heart will search for a home
As long as it shall beat.
But, in telling,
I think I have found where the searching can begin.
Perhaps I will find the threads of belonging
In the raging laughter of friends,
And weave my own patchwork cloth.
Perhaps I will find a quiet soul
In the fleeting kindness of strangers,
And learn the rhythm of a steady breath.
And perhaps I will find a prismatic heart
In the stillness of a lover’s embrace,
And let it catch the gentle light again.
Yes, I will build a home
With mine two hands,
On the ground your sacrifice
Has softened for me,
Under a sun that carries your love,
And in this home, my children will find
Roots to give their hearts command,
And wings to soar o’er this brave new land,
And feel the joy of knowing
Two worlds in their tiny, peaceful hands.