Como Tú / Like You / Like Me

{for the D.A.C.A DREAMers and all our nation's immigrants}

. . . my veins don’t end in me

but in the unanimous blood

of those who struggle for life . . .

. . . mis venas no terminan en mí

sino en la sange unánime

de los que luchan por la vida . . .

—Roque Dalton, Como tú

Como tú, I question history’s blur in my eyes

each time I face a mirror. Like a mirror, I gaze

into my palm a wrinkled map I still can’t read,

my lifeline an unnamed road I can’t find, can’t

trace back to the fork in my parents’ trek

that cradled me here. Como tú, I woke up to

this dream of a country I didn’t choose, that

didn’t choose me—trapped in the nightmare

of its hateful glares. Como tú, I’m also from

the lakes and farms, waterfalls and prairies

of another country I can’t fully claim either.

Como tú, I am either a mirage living among

these faces and streets that raised me here,

or I’m nothing, a memory forgotten by all

I was taken from and can’t return to again.

Like memory, at times I wish I could erase

the music of my name in Spanish, at times

I cherish it, and despise my other syllables

clashing in English. Como tú, I want to speak

of myself in two languages at once. Despite

my tongues, no word defines me. Like words,

I read my footprints like my past, erased by

waves of circumstance, my future uncertain

as wind. Like the wind, como tú, I carry songs,

howls, whispers, thunder’s growl. Like thunder,

I’m a foreign-borne cloud that’s drifted here,

I’m lightning, and the balm of rain. Como tú,

our blood rains for the dirty thirst of this land.

Like thirst, like hunger, we ache with the need

to save ourselves, and our country from itself.