Between the Lines of Freedom and Exile
“ICE
increasingly targeting
undocumented migrants”
Hands toil
in soil not their own—
or so the law says.
This land,
drawn with
imaginary lines,
does not welcome
the ones who work it.
What makes us so
“Great?”
Surely not
our violence,
our forced rehoming.
The boy across from me
laughs—
mouth rounded
in an “oh.”
Does he know
the cruelty
of the place
he now calls home?
Does he have family
cast out,
deemed unworthy
of this country
I was simply born into?
We don’t get to choose.
We used to be
the safe place.
Now asylum
is only
for the insane.
And I no longer recognize
the “land of the free.”
Who’s free?
Not those trapped
in a system
designed to
keep some of us
in line—
standing in lines
for “handouts”
we were made to need
by the very order
we didn’t ask for.
The irony—
as solid
as the iron bars
that cage
the unwanted.
Some are held
because they must be.
Many
because there was
no choice.
Or because
the ones with power
refuse to see.
Is it Un-American
to be brave?
To speak,
when our voice
might be
all we have?
America is a place—
but it has become
no place
for “the tired,
the poor,
the huddled masses
yearning to breathe free.”
And still—we can’t breathe.
Our fear a fist
Shaking, clenching,
Kneeling
Is disgraceful
But not when
We're suffocating
As our institutions and
What we once stood for
What we maybe never
Stood for
Crumble
And the closer we get
To truth
The more violent
We become
And still,
silence spreads—
heavy as iron.
​
*Lines in italics reference a Washington Post headline from July 3, 2025; and Emma Lazarus’s sonnet The New Colossus, which appears on The Statue of Liberty.