Everything changes, yet, everything stays the same.
It’s that the final days of the world are also
the first of the new life. That’s how everything is,
different, but the same; the beach and the sea;
the sun and the moon; my face and yours.
But it’s not that the night and the day are the same,
nor inversions, but intertwined ghosts.
The structure of limits disintegrates:
the ‘Gold Line’ station that I take in Pasadena
is the same as the station of Montparnasse
that my father took when he was my age.
it’s because that’s how immigration is:
there’s no return. We are all entangled.
The immigrant is the precondition of humanity
I am the son of immigrants, for that I am a citizen;
I am a colonizer, I am also colonized.
But in my heart, in my fantasies, it was me
that left everything to come to the United States,
and my parents are my children, and I win our bread
without their help, without anybody’s help,
but only with my blood and my broken body.
In our life, we need to decolonize,
but also, the two of us, we need to reclaim.
