I don’t have roots

I was dug from the earth (molded from many clays)

Born into lost words and

Freefalling freedom

I am one of those Americans bound to land

And nowhere to place this conviction

Schools raised me to claim

My inheritance.

Whitman claimed I contained

These lands in my body,

In my expression, boundless.

Yet I, too, am colonized [contained] (contaminated?)

I am colony, colonizer, and colonized

Puertorriqueño por reclamación

Por familia, por sangre

Told our lands were never ours

Shown that power wrested

Is not soon reclaimed.

Thousands of miles away,

I’ve sped to the coast

Not knowing

What burned me into

Dying bursts of the sun.

Searching, scanning

The buried horizon,

The swaths of fading waves