Roots Lost

I grieve the loss of a culture

I never knew I had.

I wonder if its now too late

To try and get it back.

*

From Malta came my grandma,

The one I never met,

With language, food, and ways of life

I yearn for with regret.

*

But I don’t need to go so far,

The same thing happens here.

Erased by years of Spanish rule

To which native groups adhere.

*

I thought I knew my roots,

English and Spanish too.

But those were nothing more than lies

When thinking lineage through.

*

Where has it gone? Where do I go?

How do I get it back?

Erasure comes much worse than death

And there’s no changing track.

*

So when people ask me

Why do I want to write?

It’s so that we’re not forgotten,

Hope to stick like parasites.

*

My way of life. My hopes and dreams

Are nothing more than thought,

But i don’t want to lose my ways

Even if I’m just a fraud.

****************

"Roots Lost" won Best Second Year Poetry in English at the Fourteenth Creative Writing Contest in French and English from the University of Costa Rica.