In Limbo

For all you patriots, for all you who have a home to call, I both pity and envy you. In my short life, I have come to find out that the realization of having no home is heart wrenching. And after so many years of licking my wounds, it seems they still bleed, for as I write this my heart clenches itself in a tight embrace, and my weary eyes blink away the misty haze. So I come to ask, how is it I find myself without a home, how is it I feel a flaming patriotism towards Lebanon, yet I know its streets less than some of those who would have it burn? I was two when I left Lebanon, memoryless I return, every summer, and sit in the houses of my grandparents, always: I feel out of place. I am there, remembering the times of my past summers, as I fell and scraped my knees on Lebanon’s rocks, as I fought with its children and ate of its olives. And still I feel Lebanon, its people and its cedars, have moved on every time I left in August, my month of mourning, and I am still two, with no memory of home, just a feeling of longing, I am an anchor cast in a bottomless sea, truly, I am in limbo. © Samir Georges 2010