Crossing Borders

When we leave our homes,
someone has set them on fire
though our eyes are trained to see
this no longer. Instead, this house,

we say, is filled with yellow daisies,
and its backyard houses the acacia tree
mother planted years ago.

We are given new names, new
sounds for our sorrows. We are
told new stories that somehow
still do not belong to us.

When we cross the borders
we hope one of us will make it
though we know one won’t.

Conversations are brief
and chopped; ordinary things
fill our mouths, washing the
sour taste of bleeding things.

The lands that grow beneath
our feet are on fire too, and here
we see ourselves reflected back.

The lines that separate us are many,
and many more we follow, or
hold, or hide until we see each other again—

in our sleeping, we become yellow daisies
and mother the acacia tree housing us all.