Wait for It

After 27 years, I become an immigrant.

I see the frailty of a foundation I only ever assumed. How the ribbons curling from my heart to this ground are only decoration, and the actual bonds from my feet to the soil can be overturned, can be pulled up at the root and I evicted from a place I thought was mine. A narrative of proving worth writes itself in the back of my head, years ago I wrote I spent years... unraveling all the stability I'd created and perhaps now here I am, arriving at the end of that road with nothing left but the proverbial shirt on my back, stories in my pockets. Everything is falling apart except this one thing, except this singular delusion that I have one ace up my sleeve and now that I have at last relieved myself of every other cushion, I must play it.

I must play this card,
and it has to win the pot.

After 27 years, I am firmly in the game of an American Dream now, a game of the House always wins, my skin and blood are on the table now where I never saw them before. Let me put them back on my body. Let me put them back on a foundation no one can take from me.

I'm building this shirt on my back into a fortress.