What does freedom mean to you?
To me, freedom equals having a home and family that endure under the obstacles of life. When I say home, I mean the people who occupy the house, family unit that could be related by blood or not. It’s one of those rights that give emotional and physical security in order to be ambitious in life and strive to improve your material or social status. Yes, that is a very colonial perspective, but then I witnessed 2 civil wars as a child, lived in 3 continents, all before I turned 12. Perhaps colonialism also taught me to appreciate my home because I had to rebuild it so many times in my 5 decades plus of life.
Home?
Where is home?
What is home?
These questions circle
Ceaselessly and kindle
The quest for answers for:
Where and what is home for?
I’ve immigrated to three
Continents searching for thee.
Why do you hide from me?
Why do you flee and oblige me
To search you out in lands gone mad?
How is that fair on a child who feels bad?
From the tropics to the Mediterranean,
To North America, in search of what you mean.
The child in me
Misses the simplicity of love,
Laughter that is innate,
But shaken with wars and fate,
That take away all joy and faith
In a moment of stolen breath.
Embrace the joy you’re given,
For tomorrow may bring hell or heaven.
©️Malak Kalmoni Chehab ©️
Poetess, author of poetry book, Perfectly Flawed poetry for change, that’s available on all eplatforms including Amazon. It was on the finalist list for the Canadian Book Club Awards 2023.
https://www.amazon.ca/Perfectly-Flawed-poetry-Malak-Kalmoni/dp/1525582518
Poetry for Change 