Homeland

By Isabel Perez-Ituarte

 

My escaping place

Where a piece of my heart

Will always exist

 

Where I spent my days

Growing up and

Learning

More and more about the land

 

I still go there now

To breathe in the air

All around me

As I step out while the sun rises

 

I walk down

The lonely, dirt path filled with trees and flowers

Down to the river

As I think to myself

 

I look across

The rushing, flowing, dark-brown river

And think of my grandfather

Deep in the hard, cracked, ground on the other side

 

As I walk back

I look at the people

At the houses

And say to myself ’’This is my true hometown’’

 

I walk across the dirt

To my mother’s old school

Which was once full of children

Now deserted

 

I see rusty slides

Broken swings

Dirty tin tunnels

Paint chipping off once-gray annexes

 

I walk past the houses

As the Sun is setting

Down

While the sky explodes with vibrant orange and red

 

I investigate

The rolling, green-filled mountains

As they guard and protect the sun

From the Moon slowly coming up

 

I reach my grandparent’s house gates

And look back

And try to memorize

All that I have experienced

 

I walk across the front yard

And lay down

As I swallow up

All of this beautiful, exquisite place

 

My heartland

My special place

My true escape from reality

Coscomate, Durango, Mexico