Friday, March 31, 2017

Home (The spacing will be all types of messed up here, just like the subject matter)

1)    February 22, 2017: Mexican man kills himself after being deported from US

The bus rattles through the dusty hills of the Honduran highlands near the border,
he says:
 I am making a life here now…
but I wish I could go back and tell them not to get tattoos.

Back home, you know these guys.  You grow up in LA and everyone is inked all over.
He runs his hands up and down his flannel sleeved arms, and continues to smile.
It doesn’t mean anything.

His hands slip under his armpits and he looks away briefly, his eyes blink.
They don’t know that here in Honduras, in El Salvador…  
he turns to me sternly
They think if you got a tattoo, you ran with the gang, it doesn’t matter which.
You’re a threat to them, they’re gonna take you out. 
You might not even last a day off the bus.
One guy, maybe 25 or 26, just a young guy like you, a father…
he shakes his head.
 They cut him up in front of them… It’s not like    home.
                                                                        he shakes his head.
He wasn’t a criminal or nothing,
just unlucky.                          
He just got snatched up one day while he was working.

2)    February 15, 2017: A mother of four … has taken refuge in a Denver church

I remember being caught off guard by the way the band raised their voices, strummed just a little bit louder at her memorial service,  -to mask the wailing of her children… 
a not so subtle assurance to the grieving,
 to not be ashamed of their heartache.

            …and extra tears shed for those who -couldn’t be there.
His missing cries. His missing arms that should have been consoling them.
                        The missing polished shoes he’d have scuffed on the wooden legs of the pews,
-the ill-fitting dark suit hunched over in his own mourning.

I clenched my teeth to still my stomach of guilt, and looked away.

There was a waste basket in the corner, vacant of all the dampened tissues of the vanished.

It didn’t need to be said, there are no assuring words or melodic pitch,
-that can ever soothe such injustice.

3)    Feb 18, 2017: Woman arrested while seeking domestic violence help

My Mother, and my sisters and the coyote
She starts to describe her journey across the desert, I tighten my brow in concern. I am a 22- year-old child, but I know where this is going… and she is so innocent, so much younger, and I force myself not to tear up at the thought of it.

      It took a long time… it was very hot, and very hard to walk with my little sister crying.
Someone interrupts and asks what a coyote is, and she clarifies
I don’t know the word…
they are the ones who take you across the border.
      And we nod solemnly recalling images of human traffickers, vile slavers, heartless criminals taking advantage of the powerless. Every story ends with someone left to the inhumane wastelands. Forced into drug gangs. Unmarked graves. Tattered skirts hugging sun bleached bones in the desert breeze.

      …and on one of the final nights, we stayed in these caves.  We were so scared, very nervous but excited that we were almost here,       almost…      home.
My stomach drops,     but I pretend that I’ve been wanting to hear any of this... reminding myself that to bear witness, to listen, is a necessary discomfort.
-she sees the subtle grit I’ve reserved, and knowing me, smiles her brightest smile.
-for a brief second, it stabs-
Don’t worry, this is a story about my… angel.           she blinks a few times too rapidly.

I don’t understand how anything good can come of the horror running through my mind, but she collects herself and returns to the story.
He was very protective, our guide. We knew it was dangerous, but that night he came to me…       a blurriness hits my eyes.

 and he pulled me and my sisters and my mother aside…
and he hid us…       from them.

She didn’t say what happened next,
but the gratitude of salvation streamed down her cheeks…

And we each said a silent prayer thanking God for the courage of a criminal.

4)    February 21, 2017: ICE to expand deportations

The President of the organization I work at is on the phone asking the same question that has been keeping me up every night. There is whispering between the desks, we feel it creeping across our skin.                       
I can’t hear the voice on the other side of the phone but I know the answer
is not enough.

The poster on the wall displays our people, their quotes describing how this place feels like family, like home. Their stories run through my mind, their smiles, their gifts, their welcoming invitation to join the family they’ve created.
We remind them in the self-assured voices of professionals that if the worst happens they should be silent to protect themselves. The concern in our eyes is not enough.

We march through the streets with banners calling out injustice, calling for understanding. We voice our concerns to the press.  We sign petitions and give money in one time gifts, that become repeated contributions as the horror stories become routine.
Each headline a daily reminder that it is not enough.

5)    March 6, 2017: Trump’s new travel ban blocks migrants

I am listening to the radio as:
a man states that Congress has given the President the authority to block,
any person or group.
To keep them from coming here.      It’s too much so I turn it off.
a woman describes a boy being thrown off the train, how the wind sucks them into the wheels. She says my taxes pay to keep their tiny bodies       from coming here. It’s too much so         I turn it off.
some spitting mouth enthuses over the progress of the wall.
I turn it off.
            some monotone sulks about the increasing drought in the war-torn land.
I turn it off.
some foreign Brit drones about the American Sikh shot and told to go back.
                                    I turn it off.    
some buzzing journalist muses on the language of the ban. 
            I turn it off.
some northern accent picks at the increased traffic at the border.
            I turn it off.
            some men lose their fingers fleeing in terror:
I turn it off, but not before I hear they were fleeing from here.
From my home.

6)    Today: Are these headlines our home?

this deprived fortress of
buffered walls,
this barren shelter to retreat, where we swallow our daily guilt,
 fearful of others’ need…
                        flaunting self-protection, divested in care,
secured, with paranoid spears ever outwardly cast
hiding behind the locks on our doors claiming no impact

            Or is our home
a place that despite our fears, we dare 
                        to entrust a stranger with our stories…
grateful and proud enough to share
            with our doors cast wide open in welcome,
            our arms wide so we can greet them, our ears open to listen,
our hearts transformed
because without them,
 we’ve lost,    everything. 


No comments: