“To love a country as if you’ve lost one: as if it were you on a plane departing from America forever, clouds closing like curtains on your country, the last scene in which you’re a madman scribbling the names of your favorite flowers, trees, and birds you’d never see again, your address and phone number you’d never use again, the color of your father’s eyes, your mother’s hair, terrified you could forget these. To love a country as if I was my mother last spring hobbling, insisting I help her climb all the way up to the U.S. Capitol, as if she were here before you today instead of me, explaining her tears, cheeks pink as the cherry blossoms coloring the air that day when she stopped, turned to me, and said: You know, mijo, it isn’t where you’re born that matters, it’s where you choose to die—that’s your country.” HomeAmericaPoetryUnited StatesPoemImmigrationImmigrantsCountriesEmigration Book:How to Love a Country Source: How to Love a Country
“How could you, America? With no answer for all I knew of country was my hurt and rage. But home was home: I dusted off the secrets, cleaned up the lies, nailed the creaky floors down, set a fire, and sat with history books I’d never opened, listened to songs I’d never played, pulled out the old map from a dark drawer, redrew it with more colors, less lines. I stoked the fire, burning on until finally: Okay, nothing’s perfect, I understood, I forgive you, I said—and forgiveness became my country.” HomeAmericaPoetryPoemForgivenessPerfectionImperfectionCountries Book:How to Love a Country Source: How to Love a Country
“Then countries—your invention—maps jigsawing the world into colored shapes caged in bold lines to say: you’re here, not there, you’re this, not that, to say: yellow isn’t red, red isn’t black, black is not white, to say: mine, not ours, to say war, and believe life’s worth is relative.” United StatesSeparationBordersMexicoCountriesRio GrandeRio Grande River Book:How to Love a Country Source: How to Love a Country
