Biography Story Lab: Foreign

Foreign

As I stare at the screen

and wait for your call

my heart fills with pain

as it starts to recall

the million goodbyes

and thousands of tears

that I have collected

throughout many years.

I remember the first

and toughest of all

when you hugged me so hard

and refused to let go

you sent me away

to go all alone

and sadly since then

I have been on my own.

And I know it is best,

that change must be good,

but I long to go back

I wish that I could

the land that I left

is all lost and gone

only you remain

and I must move on.

But oh how I miss you

and oh how it hurts

that I pray to the world

for time to reverse

to go back before this

before I knew this pain

to when we were together

before I got on that plane.

Drawing by Andrea Méndez

Author's Note: I decided to write a short poem about how hard it is to leave my home country and live so far away from my family. As of now, it has been about four years since I left in Venezuela, and since then I have moved two times, once to Italy and once here. I have been living out of a suitcase, only seeing my family once a year or more, talking to them only on the phone. This poem is my way of expressing my pain of being so far away from my home, but also of longing a home that does not exist anymore, as things keep on getting worse in Venezuela and there is barely anything left for me to call home anymore. There is so much more I could say about this, about leaving my country and my family and having to adapt to other cultures and societies, but I decided to focus on one thing, my family and how much I miss them.