I went to a place where they knew my name

When they called me

It sounded like home

They pronounced all my syllables correctly

They said you and I knew they meant ME

They said hello (ሰላም/salam)

And imparted their peace with me

They smiled with no fear in their eyes

Their gaze reflected the bounty of their essence

Their benevolence matched with defiance

And I knew I’ve found my way home.

 

I found my lost self on the sidelines of a foreign city

Along the dirt roads in the journey outside of me

I can almost define me by what you’re not

It’s in the fortitude of our broken ship

And the bliss of our dark humor

The dark edges of our luminous truth

The myth – that is our history

Our identity is a legend to you

You cannot fathom that I be the origin

And maybe, you are derived from me

In an alternate version of reality

 

I went to a place where they spoke my truth

You cannot understand it

And that is why I miss home,

Seek home.

 

The text of this chapter was written by Tsigereda Getachew Eshete and initially published in Uplifting Blackness: A Showcase of Art by Western’s Black Student Community. It is licensed and reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

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About the author

Tsigereda Getachew Eshete

Western University

Tsigereda (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in Wind Engineering at Western University, specializing in the aerodynamic and aeroelastic characterization of solar panels using both experimental and computational methods. She is currently developing and validating CFD workflow to assess wind loads on solar trackers, using Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel tests for benchmarking.

She’s also an avid reader and a poetry enthusiast, who enjoys reflecting on her life experiences through her poetry. She self-published an anthology, The Unspoken Outlook, in 2015 during her undergraduate studies in Ethiopia. This poem reflects her early experiences as an international student in Canada, exploring the isolation and aloneness she felt as a foreigner. It challenges readers to entertain different perspectives and alternate versions of reality. Phrases like “the fortitude of our broken ship” and “the bliss of our dark humor” depict the nature and complexity of her Ethiopian heritage. Proud of her Ethiopian roots, the poem represents her attempt to find belonging by bringing her identity into her new environment.