Barbarians

I can’t say I’ve paid a coyote

perilous trek to the Texas border

I can’t say I’m crossing the Mediterranean

small boat with ninety others

I can’t say I’ve been confined twenty years

tin shack in a barbed-wire camp

I can’t say I was driven from my homeland

colonial fiat favoring European Jews

I can’t say bombs level my city

rubble my building, maim my children

what I can say is I’m pretending to be safe

here in the global north

I can say I forgo meat, shun plastics

& won’t fight back

when barbarians — people just like me

burst through the gates