In the beginning,
our language was the language of hands reaching,
of eyes widening in wonder,
our first syllables soft as laughter,
the cries of need, of comfort.
Before we knew borders or walls,
we knew only that all voices
echo back as our own.

Yet, now—
in classrooms and cities, they teach us difference,
draw lines between us like rivers,
split the world into names and colors,
as if the same sun rises and falls
for some, but not for others?

They say nation, and we forget the world.
They say foreign, and we turn our backs.

We are taught to look away,
while across a sea, lives tremble
like our own, voices call out,
drowned beneath the same endless sky.

Do we not breathe the same breath,
warmed by one sun?
Does not the joy of a distant child
bring the same light to their mother’s eyes
as yours? And when sorrow shades their sky,
does it not linger like rain on our own?

Yet here we stand, faces turned to screens, ...