A poem about my experience as an immigrant boy in America.
Faith, Hope, and Love
“The substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things unseen.”
Even in the shadows, Faith,
which is the shimmer of things
that’ve long lost their luster,
still slices like lightning.
“So let’s go all in.”
“Slow down,” says Hope.
“Caramel-colored skin tones
moved into the pale-yellow house
on De Soto Street.”
The ebony boys chased home
the Nicaraguan refugee,
right up to the broken screen
frowning on a dilapidated porch.
His chubby thighs ran inside
just in time to slide his cup across the table
for his ole man to pour him a drink
as he wiped his Latino eyes dry.
Too afraid to speak and too prideful to cry,
he wished he’d shouted out the window,
“Am I so different than you?
I thought we all bled red.
“Is it because I just got here?
“Isn’t this the neighborhood
where we’re allowed to play with the broken toys
we find splattered with blood inside chalk outlines?
“And what about stamps?
No, I’m not talking about the ones you pay for,
lick and stick to an envelope.
“Isn’t this the place where food stamps don’t judge
what we use them for?
“Isn’t this cruel game the epitome of irony?
My country—
Castro’s and Che’s communist coup—
coughed up my family,
tainted with the smell of indigestion,
as America promised us puke-free asylum
with ironclad discretion.
“But here you are,
calling me out to take away
the one thing that makes me feel safe—
a yellow and black bicycle with a basket for all my secrets,
used-wheels my father worked for
by humping graveyard shift after graveyard shift
as a security guard on Bourbon Street.
It was my bastion of Hope.
And now it sleeps under your bed.”
And then there are those
who explain away this contradiction as paradox,
telling this new boy on the block
he’s too young to understand.
“Maybe that’s true.
I’m only ten years old
but I know what oppression preys like
long before it crouches at my door,
long before it became social justice’s battle cry.”
But the story isn’t over.
This isn’t goodbye.
“How do I know?
Cause Love is the final virtue.
So I’ll make this short—
I forgive you.
“And that’s what makes the story good,
across all ghettos and barrios.
Love lingers long after the final gunshot.”