By Marlene Woods
LatinaLista
One Tuesday night
my father called,
“you must come tomorrow,”
he said over the phone.
In twelve hours we packed
our most basic belongings
and our lives.
We crossed the border
one September day
under the mid-day sun.
We crossed the line
into another world
full of promise, hope,
adventure, and joy.
We crossed into a new land
knowing we would
be together at last
as a family,
to work hard
for the better life
we dreamt of
the day we left our house.
My small red brick house
was left behind
in my mother land
vacant of a life that would have been,
empty of a life that never was,
and void of unrealized dreams;
dead before their birth.
What would have become of me
if we had never left that day?
At our new home
void of furniture
and full of unknowns,
I fell asleep
night after night
after tired red eyes
were empty of tears.
My poor teenage heart
full of laments,
had questions
and answers
I could not yet understand.
Each morning
when I awoke,
I closed my eyes tightly
hoping to be
in my own bed;
it always failed.
Why a new country
when I had my own?
Why impose another language
if mine I already knew?
It took half of a lifetime
to understand the reasons
for such pain.
The rewards arrived incrementally,
but for a while it was difficult
to accept such drastic change.
Now I am immensely grateful
for the opportunity to be,
someone I would have never been
if that Wednesday we had stayed.
Marlene Woods is a writer and poet. This poem originally appeared on MasterStories.com.
