Homeland

What is Homeland?

It is the love that defines me

though it is carved with wounds

the soil that swallows my sorrow 

still feeds my body

the sky that hears my grief

shelters my breath

It is olive trees 

that guard my name

bread that rises from ashes

songs that survive

even in broken throats

It is my cage

not for what it is

but for the greed laid upon it

for the chains pressed into its earth

for the walls that turn its open fields

into narrow cells.

It is my paradise

and my prison

my grief, and my love

the place I cannot escape

because it is the place that formed me

Here, love and anger walk together:

I acknowledge its beauty

and grieve the rubble it has become

It breaks me

and it makes me whole

And when night falls

the stars remind us we belong

not because we hold the land

but because the land

has always held us.