"America, We Talk About It"

Summer Journals — August 8, 2017

— every day of the week. It is not easy. First I had to learn. Over
decades — to take care of myself. Are you listening. I had to
learn. I had to gain, pebble by pebble, seashell by seashell, the
courage to listen to my self. My true inner self. For that I had to
push you aside. It was not easy I had pushed aside my mother
my father my self in that artificial stairway of becoming you to
be inside of you — after years I realized perhaps too late there
was no way I could bring them back I could not rewind the
clock. But I did — I could do one thing. I could care. Now we
— are here.

__________________________________

From Every Day We Get More Illegal by Juan Felipe Herrera. Copyright © 2020. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, City Lights Books.