My father tells me stories

Tells me about Brooklyn bridge under a setting sun

When all was new, when he was young

Possibility stretched further than the New York skyline

That took a handful of college credits and an accent thicker than the heat on the most humid days

And in his mind's eye 

Turned them into gold

 

So how did I end up here?

Hating these white picket poles and devil's strips

Born native but made an alien by these suburbs

I walk the halls of my school on the ledge of a fence

Between the culture my parents came from and the people I grew up with

 

I try to love this country

There's so much America has given me

But every child of immigrant knows what it's like to bite the hand that feeds you

Because there's something missing

Catching myself correcting my mother's grammar

Looking up at a party and searching for brown faces

 

Being American means living the middle of two worlds

Blessed with oppurtunity and cursed with experience

In a nation great and complicated