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I.
I write to you in the language of my betrayal
To address your promise of
Belonging.
I wanted you to know,
I don't belong here either.
But maybe--
It's a little more bearable.
I can't find myself
In your stripes anymore.
My star nowhere to be seen.
II.
I write to you in the language of my exclusion
To address your promise of
Freedom.
But enough
of that tired ol' pledge.
III.
I write to you in the language of your stagnation
To address my surging grief.
I'll set fire to this homeland,
Lay myself down in the ash.
Make destruction my new master
What I torch, I'll redeem.
I write to you in the language
of my betrayal.
–
Wrote it tonight. Loosely modelled after Heinrich Heine's In der Fremde (In Exile), and those particular lines draw inspiration from another poem of his, Jetzt wohin? (Where to now?), where he writes (very loosely translated) Many thousand stars peer down - But my own once-twinkling star Is nowhere to be found Sadly I look to the sky