Tell Me, What is it Like?

On the 2nd-gen. immigrant experience, childhood, belonging, community, etc.

Tell me, Mother,

What is it like to be cradled by a hundred kin,

To find your own face in every stranger’s passing gaze?

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 are whispers on the wind,

And of grandparents whose souls I piece together

From faded photographs tearing at the seams.

In their whispers, Mother, they tell me

That I will live and die 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 scarred 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, Father,

My heart became a small and hidden thing,

So that a broken heart could not be broken

Once more.

Oh, tell me, Mother! What is it like

To know peace as an intimate bedfellow,

And feel the quiet comfort of a soul at ease?

Oh, tell me, Father! 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 neither do you know what it is like

To stand alone under a sky

That spits at your existence,

A ground that rejects your footsteps.

You do not 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 you cannot know what it is like

To carry the weight of a lineage

And feel it snap in your two hands.

And so I walk this lonely road,

A road whose dust holds no one’s past but mine.

My heart will search for a home

As long as it shall beat,

And my soul will search for solace

As long as it can yearn.

This is the burden the sons of the broken soil must face;

This is the war the daughters of the phantom shore must wage.

But in the telling,

With this truth revealed,

I think I know where the healing 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 the quietening of my soul

In the fleeting kindness of a stranger’s smile,

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 sky

Your love has warmed,

And in this home, my children will inherit

Firm roots to give their hearts command,  

And wings to sail this promised land,

And feel the joy of holding

Two worlds

In their tiny, peaceful hands.