Day 365: i live here

At Stanford
We learn words that separate
We have calculated history into segments that can be divided
We have somehow geniuslly engineered a language that can do the opposite of what the WORD was meant to
Divide

We learn big new ages ideas like post race
Post modern
Diversity
Here,
These things
Along with success
And beauty
Are measured with statistics
The brilliantly shaped minds come here for further molding into future leaders
They are Number crunchers
Some call them miraculous
But from where I’m standing
Most just look like finely tuned machines
I am still waiting on my upgrade
You see,
I have not yet found myself a home among those that academia deems genius
Because I come from a place
Where we know better than to measure anything with something as arbitrary as a number

Geographically isolated from the rest
I’ve been crying to my home since I left
Lately, it would be a lie to say I live there
Because I’ve been lying on other soil since 2008
But home
Home is where you learn what heartbreak taste like
is where you learn to drown and fall
where you have more buried family then alive
Home is there (point)
Across the ocean

This, this is just resting ground
This is just where I landed when I was foolish enough to think I could “find myself” away from my own soil

Brothers and sisters
Look west
You can see the sirens screaming stories into this continent
They are carried so graciously in our vocal chords
The next generation of poetry slinging dragons are here
At brave new voices
Hawaii
Has been making noise here for 5 years
Daring to tell a story more precious than our combined breaths
We have learned to be good visitors
From all the bad ones we’ve encountered
And although i cannot speak for the world
I can speak for my people
When I say I will never “live” here
But If we could remind ourselves that the distance
Between our bodies and the places and people we have come to adore
Is just the amount of space we allow to separate our voices
I’d like to think we could still find a way for our souls to kiss-at least for a moment
We could be on the same page
The same breath

Maybe
if I could find myself settled within the brace of your ribcage
And you could lul me to sleep with the stories not yet written on my skin
If I could live in you
Maybe the WORD could live in us all
Maybe then we wouldn’t be so afraid to speak
Maybe then
We’d all learn
To stop counting
Calculating
separating
stop pretending that we are “post” ANYTHING

maybe then
we could just live
In a moment
Together
here