Half of a Heritage Held By Our Thin Shared Line
Wrote this not really a vent but more a reflective poem for the last day of Hispanic Heritage Month a while back. It's a more personal poem even if the details are a bit ambiguous overall. Originally posted this in October 2021.
Half of a Heritage Held By Our Thin Shared Line
By: A.X. Bueno
There's plenty of times I'll reflect on things had and lost or that were just never there
Among those things is the complicated relationship with a heritage that through blood we share
It's hard to know where to even begin but I suppose I should start with the fact I'm here
And you, you're in the country of our shared heritage with your own life over there
You used to live here once in times talked about but I can no longer remember
Still I have no shortage of things to remind me of you and those are just as present in October and September
It's nearly impossible to think of my roots, my heritage, culture and not think of you
I talk a lot about and love being Dominican but I'm Ecuadorian too
Yet I know so little about Ecuador and similarly very little about you
Of course I've spent time trying to learn more and I do have some knowledge I've managed to accrue
But it's been difficult to do that with you gone for so long and Ecuador just feeling and being so far
There's just such a disconnect from both it and you that finding out more makes me feel bizarre
Despite your best efforts and my own, circumstances have just created too wide a gap
Between what has become your family and my own and I'm picking up the scrap
The scraps of knowledge of you and your country from those who knew you when you were around
But that's the thing really there's a presence you've left that just surrounds
Surrounds whatever thing about you or Ecuador that I wish to know
It's made me hesitant to learn more when every fact feels like a potential blow
I shouldn't this fact and in a way I don't but in another way I do
I just wish circumstances were different
So this disconnect to you and our shared heritage didn't make me so blue
To be able to feel a little more whole and to myself true
But instead you're still there and I'm here living my life lacking some knowledge
I'd like to imagine there's some reality out there where I do know this stuff and you're there too
But in actuality all I can do is keep trying to learn I guess
And pretend like you're just close enough and it's been enough years that I'm not still a barely knowledgeable mess