This piece was originally written and recorded when I was deployed to Ukraine and asked to write a piece about what "home" means to me. It is meant to be a spoken piece, not written out to read. But this piece is deeply important to me as I continue to redefine what "home" means.
as Odin says "Asgard is not a place, it is a people." My home is not a place, it is my people and my community. disclaimer: my views are a personal reflection and are not the views of the military as a whole.
***
i am thousands of miles away from home
and the way that i feel the word "home" in my body is like the war my parents crawled through to get here.
home should be something worth defending.
this physical home that i defend is not worth my sacrifice.
people like me, and the home that we defend are used to politicize and weaponize against other countries.
we are used as pawns, objects of war against subjects who "look" like terror
as if terror is not acts of war against others
as if terror is not acts of war against people who seek refuge
as if terror is not war against our own people
as if terror is not invading indigenous, enslaving africans, degrading this sacred land for gain
people will ask me what i am defending and i say
myself
from you
from people who make decisions that kill people who are different.
from people who make decisions that kill people who threaten them with their existence as a reminder of their wrongdoings
people will ask me what i am defending and i say myself.
from people who make decisions that kill people like me.
-
i can say "home"
but feeling it is different.
home to my people means displacement
it means a yearning for a country that does not exist
reminds me that kuv tsev neeg tsis muaj tebchaws to return to.
means when people tell me to go back to my country
or ask me where i'm really from
it means the only home i know is the ground i was born on
the ground i was born on treat me like a foreigner more than a citizen
doesn't know the difference between "immigrant" and "refugee"
and how could they
when the displacement of both immigrants and refugees have always been the cost of the united states' imperialism?
-
i call this place home more than it calls me its inhabitant
more than it holds and embraces me in its arms
just enough to squeeze productivity from my veins
-
i call it home despite its efforts to
erase me
evict me
murder me
and i call it home despite the way it tries to force me to hate others homes too
despite the way it tries to force me to believe that it is
superior
more deserving
that it is more, and every other home is less
-
but when i see home
it is not a place.
it is memories, frozen in time.
it is his arms around me
it is my brothers and their smiles
it is the way my mom never says 'i love you' but the way she puts food in front of me and says 'eat'
it is the way hmoob women hold the entirety of the hmoob community on their shoulders even when they're told they are traitors to their own people for pointing out its patriarchy and disrespect for our lives
it is memories of mov ntses dej as a meal
it is thaum kuv nthaws kuv niam lub suab luag
thaum kuv pom cov neeg kuv hlub
thaum kuv pom kuv cov viv ncaus sib pab thiab txhawb nqa
it is the way i look at youth as reflections of me
as the leaders we need
and it is the way i must learn to look at myself
if my body is a home
-
my dad says that my ntsuj plig is slightly detached from my body.
it is detached in ways i wish my mind could leave on bad days
it is detached in ways that make me susceptible to sickness
my body should be a home for my soul
rid of traumas
but if my body is my home,
it is haunted - and i refuse to vacate its ghosts
these ghosts have become a part of me
-
and as i dust off the rooms that i no longer visit
as i unlock the doors i've pretended not to notice
as i get rid of the objects,
the memories that no longer serve me
or bring me joy
as i hold these traumas close to me
thank them for the lessons
and let them go
if these ghosts disappear
and if i choose to vacate them
i wonder
if i will still be left whole
when they leave
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