This is What Having a Multicultural Identity Feels Like

Posted by Eva Jason on Mar 03, 2018 in Fall 2017, Poetry

Written by

Tomás Tedesco

Where I come, and where I go.

If you hold me, I’ll let go.

How can you know me,

If I don’t?

 

I’m the whistling arrow.

I’m the incoming bullet.

I’m the flammable air between lips.

I’m the transition of the seasons.

You can’t tame me.

 

In my worst days, my presence can be conceived

As two addicts pulling torquing springs

Frozen in the crooked wind.

I’m the feverish body fumes you feel inside

A thick wool blanket on white winter dusk.

 

My blood’s substance is heavier

Than two eagles smirking into the incoming ground.

I’m the ocean spilling itself against countless grains of sand.

I’m the insects pilgrimaging a desert of tiny boulders.

I’m an uncanny alliance.

 

I’m the breeze before the slap.

I’m the heart that beats love with war

And that puts the pieces together

When nobody is around.

I’m what remains after everything vanishes.

 

I’m a misconception because different worlds

Describe me with exclusive words.

Only I know what copper wires I’ve burnt

And melted into my pot.

I know the feeling but I can’t explain its meaning.

 

How can you know how strong I am,

When I’m made of more more materials

Than you can know?

How can anybody know how pliable and durable

You become while walking in the fragility of ignorance?

 

But since clarity is underrated,

And by poetic sloth, neglected.

I will tell you who I am:

 

I’m an immigrant, I’m discrimination, I’m the exile.

I’m how my last home felt like,

I’m a map that confuses your location while you

Are trying to get from point A to point B,

Because anywhere is the destination and although traveling is linear, time is not.

 

I’m religious and agnostic alike, sinner and saint, conqueror and conquered.

I’m a lone star shining around  dark blue

Sky spilled with LED lights.

I fluctuate every time

I transform a new place into a home.

 

I search and find

Comfort in not fitting in.

Who am I?

I’m multicultural identity

And I can only breathe in the space in between.

 

So let me breathe

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