You Are Immigrants Too

We all echo migration,
With disdain,
Believing it's something distant, something far away.
But every step into a new space,
A new situation,
It is its own migration.

That forced smile—the sickness it brewed within,
It’s just a fragment of the migratory tale.
The texts we leave unread,
The sting is real.
Migration is painful.

Beyond the little incongruities of everyday life,
The heart of migration is nothing to laugh about.
It shatters you,
Reduces you to shadows,
Lonely shadows.

Many have drifted far from what they knew,
Cherished memories lost,
Old images replaced with trivial new ones.
We are passengers in migration’s ship,
Lonely, drifting faster into oblivion.

We feel the loneliness,
The helplessness.
Yet the world rebukes us,
Tells us to go back where we came from.
Bitter as it is,
We endure.

We’re all immigrants—
All migrants.
Whether you’re seeking new friendships,
Or weathering a storm for a better life,
We’re all drifters,
Trying to stand tall,
Trying to claim the sanity of our fleeting, somber existence.