In the quiet of your midnight tutelage,
I have learned persistence.
You bend back your pride in the glow of a desk lamp
and scrawl your soul into a workbook.
You spend your Saturday evenings learning how to twist your mouth into turncoat shapes.
You memorize borrowed history,
as if you can barter your people's past for your children's culture.
You are a master of contortion.
You balance of the knife's edge of heritage and opportunity.
You feel stereotypes swirl in the air around you.
Bigotry blurs your edges and turns you into a "they".
In the shadows cast by institution,
you are but a footprint on the wrong side of a fence line.
Please remember they you are so much more.
You are Sunday Morning prayers.
You are the same stars in a new horizon.
You are the salt of the earth,
tossed into the sky by the wind.
You are calloused hands.
You follow the smoke of chimney stacks by day
and the flames of house lamps by night.
You are the heir to those who crossed the oceans and deserts before you.
You have chosen this land as your own.
Let no one take it from you.
You belong because you have adopted the soil.
You echo the hearts of those who have plowed these fields before.
They, too, were in search of miracles and a future.
You are no less than they.
You are the receiver of that same promise.
You are the American Dream.
