Sweet land of liberty where hope and dreams go to die.
Another goddamn mirage.
Land of pilgrim's pride beckoning the impoverished, the persecuted, the lost, with dreams of opportunity, promises of safety and prosperity.
When they land here, land of the free, home of the brave, they are greeted by barbed wire fences. Reviled in a land that speaks in riddles, where each accent is a target, each skin tone a statistic.
Their pleas for belonging, echo in marble halls where no one listens, where forms multiply like rats, where hope festers in sterile waiting rooms, lost in the fog of indifference.
The sun sets slowly on weary backs, moon a cold witness to dreams that evaporate, laughter dissolving in the roaring night.
Desert Dweller 