I was reading Emma Lazarus poem, "The New Colossus" the other day and it reminded me of how lucky I am that a place like America exists. Because without it my parents and their parents and theirs before them would not have had the refuge that they did and I…I would not exist. For those who don't know the words to this Amazing poem look them up. They are Amazing. Below are the words to a poem I was inspired to write after reading her work.
The Cross Roads
In me is the blood of feuding nations! I am the child of histories who met and made love amidst the corpses of their once warring kin and my voice is their wailing cries! My mothers languished moans like monastery canticles from the silent lips of monks who've sworn a solemn vow lay unspoken and unwritten in my soul.
Only I can scream my fathers rage and bemoan my mothers loss. Only I know what it is like to be the conqueror and the slave. I am simultaneously my own undoing and my own salvation. I sit as a lump of clay beside the potters wheel half formed, dry and forgotten.
Behind the overgrown vines that hide my beauty is the dusty weathered courtyard that is paved with the cobblestones of your ancestral homes. The epitaphs immortalized and forgotten of those that weren't sung as heroes, of those that didn't come home. They are the building blocks of my heritage. Your expatriates are my ancestors, your forgotten my fondest memories!