I’ve lived in three different provinces in my life, so I’ve never felt particularly attached to one place. That is, until I started feeling life settle around me. Roots replaced the wings on my heels, and I began to feel an uncomfortable stagnation that I couldn’t seem to shake. I always thought of these roots as enemies, but as I grow older, I now understand that the roots are in my heart, not my feet. Wherever I go, the places I’ve been are forever with me. My poem, “I do not belong to you” explores this understanding I have found.
I do not belong to you.
City of disruption
devastation
deprivation
You do not own
the moans
the cries
from the lies that
lay in your cracks.
I do not belong to
you.
My roots do not intertwine
with your earth.
We are not natural DNA
But inorganic matter,
foreign forests
forged on nothing but
circumstance.
We are not naturally together.
We cannot stay here
together
because
I do not belong
to you.
To stay would be
a tragedy:
the self-inflicted martyrdom of
a selfish sell-out.
Do not keep me here.
Release my feet,
Declaw your branches
from my arms –
I do not
belong
to
you.
I need to breathe new air,
a sweet smell to
remind me:
I am here
I am alive,
and alive is a good thing to be.
I need to paint myself into
a new scene,
one I have yet to see,
scribe myself into
a narrative I need to write,
fix wrongs I need to right.
Let us part
as equals,
friends in a memoir
of memories.
I do
not belong
to you.
And if you let me go free,
I may come back
to you.
Small city,
familiar home,
you belong to me,
for you are with me
wherever I go.
My home has made me into who I am, and I cannot run from it. Though I’ve grown up and moved on, the people and places that built me are forever a part of me.
Previously published in The Regis, vol. 9, no. 3.
Featured Photo via Weheartit.
