Home

I have heard the word “home” spoken around me 
more often than any other word in my lifetime;
heard it spoken thick with longing,
my mother’s tongue; slick with the accent of her ancestors,
her dialect still potent, fragrant; lingering. 

We are the sons and daughters of lands 
That will always be called “home,”
The children whose skin lays testament to a place
We may never have known,
Who in broken attempts at our mother tongues;
Still claim the lands that expelled us.

We are the in-betweeners -
Lost in a space between being and belonging;
The lingering roots of a tree pulled from its soil,
We are sired to ‘homes’ we have never been to,
Pained by memories we can never lay claim to;
More loyal to the ‘homes’ we have left
than the lands we have moved to;

We are here, but we are not.
We are here, but we are not.

Farah Gabdon