Immigrant-made, citizen-sworn, my family calls America our home.
When I uttered the vows that bound me to Her,
I made a pact with Uncle Sam to defend her from our enemies.
Only at that time, I didn’t know they would be attacking us from within.
Landlady Liberty begs me to save our home, so I’ve paid all my rent,
but I guess the differences in melanin really can mean life or death.
I wasn’t awake when they took the biggest part of my humanity,
and now I feel as if I am everywhere at once, the different parts of me yearning to fly back into each other.
I don’t want to live in this house anymore if I can see the shadow of who I used to be following me around in the dark,
it is too hard to stop hearing her humming in the early caresses of the morning.
Hell won’t stop infesting these walls of love I’ve grown up knowing and being grateful for.
People are killed simply for being the “diversity” our home advertises us to love.
Innocent families have been pounding on the entrance and Landlady Liberty screams at me to let them in
except the other tenants keep pulling me back as they drill new locks into the door.
Most of us are foreigners on native land
yet we forget that we are all people too, sometimes.
The wrecking ball is nearing everyday,
the bulldozer was driven by someone we ought to have been able to trust.
He doesn’t know how to swing gently,
the damaged roof will collapse onto all those living peacefully inside,
but they say it’s only fair since the wrecking has been beginning from within anyway.
God, I love this home, and I know deep down I will not abandon it,
although the construction team swears they are coming,
the burglars are already stealing the valuables inside my drawers of Democracy and Freedom.
But I cannot leave nor will I leave.
This house is my home. It is our home.
And I have trust, even amidst the pain, that we can help to defend Landlady Liberty.
That we can continue to protect Uncle Sam.
That we can save our families and friends and neighbors
from hatred, racism, sexism, violence, fear of differences, fear of love.
Those destroying our home may want our lives, but they don’t have the power to take our hearts.
They don’t have the power to take our voices.
Let’s make this a country of love and acceptance and recognition of privileges.
Let’s make this a good home for everyone, as we’ve said to ourselves all these years.
Everyone.