Alien

Alien

There are several things that I fear when I go out.

The one that scares me the most is to speak in my native tongue.

This brings me lots of pain. One shouldn’t be afraid of one’s own language.  I fear that whenever I use my code I wear a billboard that yells: “hey! Look at me! I was not born on your land”

Even though my skin is pale and my eyes are blue, I always think I attract undesired looks from judging minds and bitter hearts. I know is just me who feels unwelcomed at times, just because I can’t put my hand on my heart while they all sing their anthem, or celebrate your victories and mourn your losses; I have to check different boxes on applications and paperwork and always, always remember my place in your society.

I want to fit in, I want to be a part of this great nation, just one more in the vast diversity and colorful stereotypes that often haunt me.

People say that I should go out more; not to pay attention to the racist comments that hurt me so, because even if they are not directed at me personally, I take offense. One immigrant shares another immigrant’s pain. If not, they have forgotten what it is to be considered an Alien.

I can’t blame the ones that feel I should go back to my home, but then I ask: Where is that? Six thousand miles down in what direction? Four thousand miles up from where I stand? All soil is connected; all the boundaries and limits are imaginary. The fish that swims from the pacific to the Atlantic changes nationality when it crosses the human line that always divides and never unites?

I wish one day we woke up and consider everyone on this planet siblings, sons and daughters of the same father, all individuals, all different but equally worthy of being called citizens of the planet Earth.

Then again, someone might look up to the stars and find another soul, perhaps not human, to keep judging on and we might make them feel Aliens instead of extraterrestrials.

Father and Son

Father and Son

He is a simple man. He, who is at the final stage of his life, putting all the pieces back together, trying to tell a story, re-arranged every time he tells it to fit the perfection of the energetic, dynamic relationship of any and all interlocutors.

Someone as wise as him who put so much in the line after the dictatorship, giving the best possible tools to the black sheep; needs to know verbally, materialized feelings into paper or bits, that I’m proud to be his son and I know he poured his life into mine.

I am the black sheep.

The drop out, the strange, the rebel and the nuisance.

Once upon a time he stood before my grave and wept.

No father should bare the pain of burying one of his own.

No father can withstand the shock of transformation of his offspring. The mutation, the difference, the improvement disguised as flakiness, disregard for one’s own and failure.

No son should be left wondering in the woods by himself while the father, idle, walks away.

Often sons will feel embarrassment and emotions even stronger than that one towards his father. But in the world of fathers it would be considered sheer cruelty to feel these very same emotions towards the son.

Son, I love you.

Father I love you and forgive you as you have forgiven me, even before birth and death.

Wherever I go I take you with me, just like you once did back when I was a child and further back into your life.