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What is home for an immigrant?
You are always torn between two lands, two cultures, two identities. You’re too white for your brown friends if you adapt to the ways of the new land. And you’re too brown for your new friends if you stick to what’s familiar.
An “Illicit Affair” is the struggle of finding a balance between honoring your roots and your love and your new life as an immigrant. This poem is the feeling you get when you are visiting the motherland, and your old friends laugh at your newly acquired accent.
I hope readers find some comfort in these words. Give yourself the room to grow, while you find your sense of belonging!
[Read Related: Connecting With the Past and Reclaiming my Identity Using Poetry]
An Illicit Affair
I missed my motherland
yearned for its embrace
every day
But in this new land
there was excitement
a thrill
in its unusual ways
I wanted to be loyal to who I was
but I also relished the new me
There was uncertainty with the new
but the old had inflicted many wounds
I was in trouble
I was in love with them both
Was I cheating on one
when I loved the other
a little more?
[Read Related: Is my Name White Enough for you?]
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