I Am America

Sara Abou Rashed

By Sara Abou Rashed

I do not know all of your names,

but all of you do know mine… I am America 

“I am America, and oh dear     America,

I love you even at times when you do not love me.

I claim you even when you denounce me,

when you tell me that I need to go back,

that I simply do not belong. “

I am America

I am America for America is one resilient woman, who is loud, proud, strong,

whose shoulders shelter continents,

whose arms extend and reach beyond oceans. 

I am America

I am the voice, the face, the body of America.

I am America for I am different, 

for I know and feel and see and hear and love

and accept and admire and defend and embrace

my differences. 

I am America,

for I don’t want to be like everyone else,

for everyone else is not even like everyone else.

I am America for I come from someplace else:

أتي من خلف شواطئ المتوسط ولغتي العربية

تجهلها ألسنتكم. أنا أمريكا 

I am America.

I am America for I, too, have lost

a founding father, a history, a legacy

of the old wise men long ago gone;

my constitution is one book they’re leaving to dust

I am America for I, too, have won a mother:

The statue of liberty stands tall like the only family virtue

you may not find in foreign blood,

but you certainly breathe in air.

I am America for I am revolutionary.

My revolutions are volcanos, my voice rises and falls like hot lava on the hands of my oppressors.

I am America that I protest.

The Washington march spread like honey

in my veins. Yes, honey I say, because in America, we are sweet and we stick together like this.

I am America, because no one can divide me – your borders do not define me. My landscape is my pure dress being stained with violent blue and bloody red.

There are needles being put through me,

scissors and sewing machines ready to redesign me, telling me parts of me they like, and parts need cut, uprooted, taken out.

Out of the streets, out of my insides, out –  I am America, because I am one; it’s all of me,  it’s all of us, or none. 

I am America

I am America, and oh dear America,

I love you even at times when you do not love me.

I claim you even when you denounce me,

when you tell me that I need to go back,

that I simply do not belong. When you strangle me,

handcuff me at airports, prison me, deport me,

I love you still and I grasp onto you,

like a child to its mother,

even when you let go of me. 

And I wear your face, America. I wear your

face of 13 stripes and 50 stars even when you’re too scared

to look into mine, because I am not ashamed

of you, I am ashamed of what they’ve made you.

America, they do not know you like I do.