Does it matter now
that I come from hand-me down shorts,
tattered shirts, trips
to Goodwill with grandma
drinking Little Hug Fruit Barrels,
high fructose corn syrup
swimming on my tongue,
singing the song of need,
of wearing America’s colors
on my body like a dream
my parents regretted. My mother spoke
in prayer for my undocumented
uncle, handed us ketchup
sandwiches, hung
hope on a clothesline
in our basement. I promised
to grow and grow and grow
as quick as a cavity
become more than an immigrant’s
struggle, more
than my parent’s sacrifice, more
than my mother’s red-faced shame
when the immigration officer
tells her we do not recognize
Palestine as a country. Sometimes
I cry at this world, how we dangle
from one place to the next,
always en route, like God
carved the words deportation
and exile into the milk
we suck from our mother’s breasts
as babies. Does is matter now
that I grew and held the weight
of my parent’s eviction
until I made a home
out of blue skies and clouds.