Two Halves

Two Halves,
like the sun and moon,
orbiting the same sky,
never touching,
always turning.

Born of Haitian soil,
from a family too poor to keep me,
their love too great
to let me starve for dreams.

I grew in American arms,
a family who wanted more to love,
who cradled me like their own,
who stitched me into their story
with hands both tender and trembling.

Haitian and American,
stitched together like a mended quilt—
edges rough,
seams worn thin,
never quite fitting.

To the whites,
too dark,
an uninvited shadow in their light.
To the blacks,
too foreign,
my story unfamiliar, my roots questioned.
And yet—
Here I am.
Tethered between two worlds,
speaking only one language,
but belonging to neither.

I cannot say,
"I hate being American,"
for you raised me, shaped me, fed me love.
I cannot say,
"I am Haitian,"
for my memories are ghosts
and the language I once knew
faded in a home where it was never spoken.

Hatred lingers in the quiet spaces—
for a self I cannot place,
and the self I never became.
Haitian,
complete in a way I can only imagine,
a version of me that feels both near and unreachable.

Two halves—
sometimes grazing the edge of each other’s light,
sometimes drifting into distant orbits,
never locking into place.
Always rotating,
always longing,
always a little lost
in the vast, indifferent sky.