Homeland

I don’t hate my homeland

but I’ve been gated all my life

wondering if I’ll ever come back

wanting people to love me for who I am

not for the color of my skin.

Part Spanish but I don’t speak

a word of my native tongue

because of what other people

might say behind my back.

I wonder if the white lies

of a nation will always haunt

my daydreams of becoming

someone I wanted to become.

I’m not Benedict Arnold.

I won’t turn my back on

the things I once knew.

It feels like a tango

of something to reclaim.

I want my own voice

to be heard by millions.

I don’t care if I get hated

but the universe knows me.

No one’s purely an angel.

We don’t play the same tunes

on the radio once we get the chance.

I fell in love with the glitz

and the glamor of my days in the sun.

I don’t want to start over

when it comes to my cultural being.

I strayed away from the darkness

once it caught a friend of mine.

I never befriended someone

of the same ethnicity as mine.

Lonely when it comes to those

who surrounds her.

Broken once about the things

I’m not sorry about what I said.

I don’t hate my homeland

but I’ve never felt the royalty

people say foreign ones get treated.

I guess they wanted a Benedict Arnold

to speak her mind and turn her back

on a world she once knew.

My homeland is not where unicorns

fly over and over every time

I wanted to speak.

Silence by what she knows.

I can’t just say nothing

to anyone but my mind

will tell you you're wrong.

I love my homeland

but don’t say you treat

people like me like royalty

when all you see is people

wanting you to fail and fail again.