Nestled in the dirt, under the roots of a date tree
Half of my heart waits
Calling out to me desperately
I’m walking, earbuds in
Down the streets of a city I don’t think wants me
My feet hit the pavement to the rhythm of music
In words that aren’t my mother tongue
While my mother’s tongue struggles to pronounce the words that make up this new land
Hard L’s and unrolled R’s and sounds that warp her name
Twisting, turning, tangling until they weave something that makes the most familiar parts of herself seem like strangers
And
I wonder if
Home sounds the same to her in this other language
In this other world
Where neighbors are distant and the family that moved with her is the only proof of the dusty streets she used to live on
Where golden shrines that used to dot the city, like glimpses into heaven
Were filled with throngs of people, crushing together to get closer to God, to each other, to the promise of forever
And if the only promises she knows now are the ones that were never kept
I wonder if
My father hunched and shoveling the mounds of snow that taunt him every winter
Remembers the feeling of the desert that used to warm his feet
As he played soccer, shooting goals the way he later had to shoot guns
If every time he watches the news, he remembers the feeling of shrapnel piercing his chest, or
If, every time he bites into American fruit,
He remembers the fruit picked fresh off the tree of his family home, sweet juices dribbling down his chin
And tastes the nostalgia
I wonder if
Every time the words of their mother language die on their tongues, my siblings are reminded of the graveyard their mouths have become
Or if they are homesick for a home they’ve never set foot in,
If they set a seat at the table for the distant relative who will never come
And stare at the empty seat and feel an anger as consuming as the wars that tore their homeland apart,
Wars that left their parents walking on the earth as strangers
Floating between two worlds
Always islands
I wonder if they still know that love isn’t always a four-letter word
Or that words can say things, but they can’t feel things
That the ache in their chest from missing something makes it real
And that, just because something is missing, doesn’t mean it’s gone,
I wonder if I —
The music stops
Underneath the palm tree, half of my heart is wailing,
Railing against its earthen confines
But its voice is muffled against the dirt
“Come back to me,” it begs
But I am deaf to its noise
I press play again and keep walking in the wrong direction
Contemplating homesickness in the wrong language