In the Land That Calls Me Stranger

I walk softly here— not because I want to, but because the air hums with eyes that follow. The ground beneath me feels borrowed, as if one wrong step might make it vanish.

My tongue is careful now. I roll my r’s in silence, tuck my vowels behind my teeth. Even my laughter feels foreign— too loud, too brown, too much of home for a place that wants me quiet.

I carry my papers like a shield, my heartbeat quickening at sirens that aren’t for me but could be. Every headline feels like a warning, every promise like a trap.

Sometimes I dream in two languages, and wake up wondering which one I am allowed to speak. I scroll through news that turns my people into shadows, our stories into statistics, our names into questions.

There’s a weight to being watched— to always wondering when the shoe will drop, when the next word, the next law, the next face in power will remind me that I do not belong.

And yet— in the quiet of my kitchen, the smell of cumin and corn wraps around me like a prayer. I hum an old song my mother used to sing, and for a moment, I am safe.

In that small space, I remember: they cannot take the warmth from my hands, the stories from my blood, the language that built me.

I am still here— standing on soil that may not claim me, but still holds me. I am the daughter of survivors, the echo of a thousand women who refused to disappear.

Even when the world turns away, I remain— unseen, but unbroken, afraid, but alive, a heartbeat that refuses to be silenced.