Poetry Pause | Grandmother’s Garden, Section 18

Grandmother’s Garden, Section 18

By Meena Alexander

In New York City, the passage of days and night crosses things out.

You enter JFK. Along with a string of others — brown people, black
people, people of all tints, all ages, voices breaking with eagerness, 
sore voices.

Your throat hurts with all the words. You think you know the
language but the words sound so different.

A few years later, in that bleak courthouse on Center Street, you put
up your right hand. You are there with women from Latvia, men
from Kashmir, mothers from Mesopotamia, fathers from Sri Lanka.

You swear to belong. You fear you will never fully belong. But who 
could have guessed how fierce it is, the longing to belong.

You become hostage to that bright bloody thing inside the migrant’s 
soul that says, here, here, this is where you belong. Now no one can 
cast you out.

You hear a voice say this to you in a dream. You do not believe the
voice.

You know you are on Manhattan Island, not the island of birds.

Where else could you be?