DYING LIKE A STATUE Poem by Mona Kareem

At twenty-three,
you arrive with your sad family,
thinking you're a girl who goes to airports but never travels.
You sit in a plane, surrounded by black soldiers
sleeping and dreaming of Iraqis they had to kill.
In 16 hours, you lost your country for the second time,
a country than no one can love.

The university pays you less than minimum wage
to teach their kids about women getting married traditionally,
and men who haven't discovered their homosexuality.
You go to class as if you were going to a visa interview.

There, you left a life you know is dying like a statue,
and in the middle, there is a life that does not leave Skype,
there are houses fit for rats, boxes, and us.
You know:
that your heart beats alone,
that you cannot be angry for too long
because you are too busy doing many things,
that everything changes if we wait endlessly,
that no promises can be saved after crossing the ocean.