There’s this poem from writer Warsan Shire called “Home”. She wrote it in 2009 reflecting on the war in her home country, Somalia.
The opening stanza reads:
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
Everybody has a story we don’t see. Every immigrant has a story of their journey that is part of their past and their present. This is Daniela’s story. She’s an unaccompanied minor. I’m using a pseudonym because Daniela still doesn’t have status. She came from a place that became the mouth of a shark. In just a few months, she went from a teenager praying in her village church to a migrant, traversing half a continent to reach the Rio Grande.
