“Sixty Days,” a poem by Layla Faraj

Author’s note: Before Trump’s current term as president, citizens from sixteen countries were offered Temporary Protective Status, or TPS. As of September 2025, only eight remain: TPS has now been revoked for citizens of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, and Venezuela. This leaves over one million U.S. residents with a sixty day notice to leave the country, a cruel and undiscussed form of deportation. Included in the million are some of my own family and friends, to whom I dedicate this poem.

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Sixty Days

There are sixty days
to explain to the children
who do not yet know hate:

today The Nation weeded
and counted us among
the invasive species. 

There are only sixty days
to turn our home into a house:
to decide, as The Nation decided, 

what to pack
what to sell and
what to throw away.

Forgive me, but I spent half a precious day
crying over your favorite fork
and looking out the kitchen window.

& I am sorry, but
there is no time to ask “What
will you miss the most?”

& there is no time
to wonder “What do you know
about Syria?”

There are sixty days
and I think about the years,
thirteen and counting

there are sixty days.
What will remain of us here?
I donate the toys.

The plants find themselves new homes.
I do not paint over the
height-lines on the wall. 

There are sixty days
and I find myself reciting:
Is it really 9pm?

My daughter finally asks me:
“What does deportation mean?”
I sell the car and

her car seat,
her books and her favorite story,
her bed and her bed sheets.

Tonight she crawls beside me
in the now barren house
whining about the cold.

She doesn’t ask me
why the house is empty
or what goodbye means.

There were sixty days
and the children, once naive,
now understand what hate is.