Origins

I don’t belong,

But I long to belong

Or at least I used to.

There’s poetry to displacement.

I was his, I am now mine.

The world has me whenever

And wherever She wants.

I shut up. I speak up.

I violently stifle the pain

Of not belonging

The pain of having to explain

Myself,

The countries where I’ve been —

My origin,

My nature.

Your shifting opinions of me.

It’s the curse of coming from poverty,

Then getting to live among the rich and educated

Doomed to never belong to either world.

My accent, which you can’t quite place

Makes you restless,

Makes me displaced.

Today, I embrace

My lack of a place

I can call home.

That I exist in this dimension

Is all I can be certain of.

I make of every introduction, every conversation

With someone new

An oversimplification of a single branch

Of the tree that is my life.

In an instant, I have to decide

Which parts of me

Are the most digestible

For you.

So you will accept me,

So I make you more comfortable,

So you get me —

Which you can’t,

As I don’t.

I wear the gray of communist concrete,

The scorching yellow of hot summers

Spent drawing on that concrete.

“One day, I’ll leave this place”

Was the anthem of my childhood.

One day, I’ll go back.

Each and every one of your questions about my past

Only reveals how different we are.

“Who are your people?”

“Where is your family?”

I wear my own colors.

The flag of a clan of one.

© Lola Sense 2021

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Thank you for reading! This poem was initially published on Medium. If you like my work, you can support me with a tip or a coffee. And if you enjoyed this, you might also like: