'You Are a Refugee'

They said it like a stain,

You are a refugee.

Not a name, not a soul,

Just a wound to be feared,

A whisper that grew teeth.

Once, we laughed in the same sunlight,

Shared streets, shared games, shared silence.

But the day they learned the truth

Was the day their eyes grew walls.

Their warmth turned cold,

Their smiles folded into suspicion.

They say hate is loud..

But it was the quiet that crushed me:

The unreturned greetings,

The spaces that grew wider,

The dinners I no longer get invited to.

I became the exile in every room.

Loneliness sits beside me now,

Not a stranger anymore,

But a constant, familiar ache.

So I turn to my lens,

My only honest eye,

Capturing what I can’t say aloud:

The beauty in broken things,

The dignity in survival.

And words..

Oh, how they never judged me.

They held my shaking hands

And translated my ache

Into something I could bear.

Into truth.

You call me ‘refugee’…….

But I am more than the name you fear.

I am the ink that survives the fire,

The frame that stills a restless soul.

And though I walk through silence,

I walk with stories you will never silence.