We Are All Immigrants

 We should all identify as immigrants ~ 

born into borders we never drew,

tongue-tied in languages we did not choose,

footsteps echoing across stolen land.

Invite ICE to come and get us all, 

line us up with our ancestors’ bones,

ask them where we belong.

They won’t know either.

Tag us with numbers,

paper our skin with birth certificates,

but still we wander ~ 

spirit drifters, border crossers,

dreamers of something freer

than fences and flags.

I carry the passport of a country

that does not know my name,

but I belong to rivers,

to mountains,

to the great migration of stars

overhead, unbothered by patrols.

If you come for one of us,

come for all ~ 

the farmer, the teacher,

the undocumented child

with a paper sun in her pocket.

We are immigrants,

even when we forget,

even when we are told otherwise ~ 

children of movement,

pilgrims of future. 

And when they come knocking,

we will answer

not with fear,

but with the open doors

of a borderless home.