Living Beyond Borders: Growing up Mexican in America

I Want to Go Home Justine Narro I want to go home. I can still see it, still feel it The cuts and bruises on my knees, the dirt under my fingernails, and the sweat in my hair from countless days and nights of picking naranjas from my backyard tree BBQs where I would go outside to pick the chile piquín for the pico de gallo and my tíos sat outside drinking Tecate and Modelo while my dad cooked the fajita of chasing light bugs fireflies lightning bugs o luciérnagas, como dice mi abuelo I want to go home. A place you have never stepped foot on but call it your land A place you know nothing about but say you have more right to A piece of paper And it is yours? Because it is now “technically” legal The gringos trick us Promise us better All for what? To kill mi abuelo’s abuelo For a price Because it is fair Because it is now yours? I want to go home. The barrio where I was raised A stucco home with three bedrooms and one bath Chickens and cabritos in the back Our own natural lawn mowers At five years old when I helped place the now cracked tiles in our new house Where I swept the dirt off the concrete porch not two inches above the ground and played in the six-inch puddle of water on the edge of the house, where the land indented from years of our makeshift driveway I want to go home. You say it is yours because it is America’s land because it is on dirt that is exactly the same on the other side of the river with a different name The cactus plants that housed the tortoises The aloe vera that I would cut for sunburns The leaves from the Mexican olive trees that I would collect None of which you know how to use I want to go home. The place where I met every friend My first day of school and the boy next to me gave me a toothy grin and ten years later asked me to prom You say I don’t belong because it is your choice to make where every memory is where all my love is where my life waits I want to go home.