Patria

It was a long way to go, to come and see you, to come to hate you and yet to love you so much my heart is bleeding everytime I think about how much I have come to hate the way you have become - a stranger in my mind, because my memory has preserved a different you, so much more gentle and generous, with people who cherish life for what it is, because they have gone through too much loss and pain. The days drifted by as if in a dream, and I wake up to find myself far away from you again, with a stabbing pain in my soul, having realized how far we have come apart, becoming so fully aware that I might never, never in my life be able to be in your embrace again. I have become one of your many lost children. The greeness of your land still burning in my mind, the thin trees growing on stony land, surviving despite all odds. The people whose face are older than their age, looking at me with pity mixed with envy. I don't know how to sooth their pain. I don't know how to sooth my pain, the wounds open up again and again to let me know that whatever I say will never be enough to convince myself that I need to walk away, that I will come back again, knowing very well that I am setting myself up to be hurt, by those who have reserved the right to claim you as their land. And I know I will come back again, let my skin be burn by your heat, let my heart bleed for your suffering so that I can leave, wandering through the earth knowing there is a place somewhere from which I have come. That place I can no longer find.