Born There, Raised Here, Accepted Nowhere - Poem

 WARNING TO THOSE WHO GET TRIGGERED EASILY - This is a personal observation, so don't get your panties in a knot.

Born There, Raised Here, Accepted Nowhere

I was born where the hills spoke my name,
Where elders knew the weight of time,
Where language danced with the olive trees,
And roots ran deeper than reason or rhyme.

But I was carried across the sea,
In a father's dream of work and bread,
To a sunburnt land that never asked,
Who I was or where I bled.

They called it lucky — milk and honey,
But the honey stuck and the milk turned sour,
For those of us with darker hair,
With foreign names and no white power.

In grade two, I saw it plain —
Two boys with names that didn’t fit,
But only one was softened, shaped,
While I was left — the othered bit.

He had blond hair, a pass to whiteness,
I had eyes too stormy, skin too tanned,
And though our blood was almost kin,
The teachers only took his hand.

They tried to make him one of them,
Even changed the way he spelled his name.
But me? I was left behind,
Too ethnic to redeem, too foreign to tame.

Later still, an old man sneered,
"Wog" he spat with practiced ease.
He didn’t know me — didn’t care —
I was brown, I didn’t please.

My own people clung together,
Spoke two tongues to stay alive,
Not just to talk, but to protect,
To feel a pulse, to survive.

They laughed, they built, they dreamed a while,
But time wore down that migrant fire,
We scattered, silent in our age,
Disconnected by slow, tired wire.

I watched us fade into their silence,
Watched us trade pride for quiet despair,
They still called us guests in our own homes,
Even as we paid full fare.

They say “be proud” to fit the mould,
But pride was priced and sold in chains,
We weren't meant to thrive, just fill
The gaps in labor, absorb the blame.

And still I hold my father’s passport,
Like a ghost refusing to forget.
I will not trade my soul for papers,
This is not my final debt.

My siblings born on this white shore,
Speak like natives, walk with ease,
But even they, I’ve come to fear,
Live inside a lie they please.

For no one here is truly claimed,
Unless they look and sound and serve.
You can be born and still be alien,
Still be doubted, still observe.

And so I stand between two fates,
A native nowhere, in-between,
Born in soil that sings my name,
Raised in streets that made me keen.

But never fully held by either,
Never fully seen or heard,
A half-formed sentence in a silence,
A history denied, deferred.

Born there, raised here — accepted nowhere.
A truth I’ve etched in bone and air.
And still I walk. And still I speak.
And still I am. And still I care.

Psalm of the Unbelonging

“Born There, Raised Here, Accepted Nowhere”

O Lord of the Borders and the Blood,
Judge not only by the papers men carry,
But by the ache that dwells in the hearts of the exiled.
You see me — I who did not choose to journey,
Yet was carried like a grain of sand in another man’s pocket,
From the land of my birth to the land of forgetting.

Why have they built nations upon erasure,
And called it prosperity?
Why do they gather the strong to work their fields,
But deny them roots among their trees?
Why do the lips of power whisper of “multiculturalism”
While their hands plant fences in the soul?

I was born in the shadow of olive groves,
Where grandmothers told stories in the dusk
And names meant something ancient.
But I was raised under foreign suns,
Where my name was twisted, shortened,
Made easy for their mouths —
But never sweet in their ears.

They told me: belong.
They told me: behave.
They told me: be grateful.
Yet their gaze always found a flaw —
My skin, my tone, my silence,
The foreign syllables of my mother’s lullabies.

I have walked through schools where my history was not taught.
I have worked in places where my worth was only in labor.
I have lived in cities where I was visible —
Yet unseen.
Heard — but unheard.
Here — but never “from here.”

O God of Abraham, of Ishmael,
Of those who wandered and those who stayed —
Where do You dwell?
In the soil of the homeland that calls my name?
Or in the exile of the heart that longs to return?

You know the double-tongue I speak —
One for survival, one for truth.
You know the passport I keep like a secret gospel,
The one that says: you were born whole before they cut you in two.

My siblings drink from this land
And think they are nourished.
But I see the hunger in their eyes,
The ache of not being fully claimed.
They have learned to blend in,
But still, they are guests in a house with no host.

So I cry to You, O Lord of the Displaced,
Judge not by borders or ballots,
But by the songs buried in the soul.
Let not the builders of empires mock the migrant’s sorrow.
Let not the proud wear false crowns
Forged from stolen voices and erased names.

Blessed are the bilingual, for they speak in code and memory.
Blessed are the rootless, for they know the truth of movement.
Blessed are the homesick, for they are closer to Eden than they know.

Let this Psalm be my witness.
Let this truth be my prayer.
Born there. Raised here. Accepted nowhere.
But loved, still, by the God who remembers forgotten names.

Amen.

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