I offer my grief as an allegiance
to this land where crows gather like
smoke in a field of dead bodies.
I offer my silence on the night
of sorrow, my hope on days when
leaving is a ship of drowned immigrants.
I have counted the dead and their graves.
I carry in me my father’s losses and my
mother’s river of tears.
I know there are birds falling the way
the walls of our houses fall during blasts.
I belong to this land and its relic of ruins.
