La migra is coming.
All breaths suddenly stop— it’s nothing new, I guess,
to be scared of the cops.
But this time, it’s somehow crueler.
Didn’t think that could be a possibility before.
The city is burning
while they’re getting picked up at the store where they went to eat breakfast,
or sip coffee at a fee larger than expected—
after a long morning in the fields.
They look so much like me. Like my father. Like my mother.
My grandfather was a farmworker too.
They’re too busy picking food for this country. They don’t have time to “attack” you.
But in the eyes of some politician, our people cause harm
while they risk their lives
for somebody else’s farm—
For the grapes in your wine,
for the tomatoes on your toast. I think they forget
Mexico was once the owner of this side of the coast.
The people are chanting for somebody’s platform, served up on a plate—
ready to consume the rhetoric
that California deserves its emergent state.
But the ones most affected
won’t be celebrities with several homes. It’s those who must decide—
save what little they have or be judged for doing so
by someone scrolling on their phone.
You never know who you would be until the sky turns orange
and the smoke grows thick, until it seeps through your walls,
until your friends start to feel sick—
From the asthma, from the smoke,
from the needing to run, from the anxiety
and the damage that has been done.
Trauma will store itself in a closet
that might not be there when we wake.
We will keep saying it’s fine
for our own sake,
for everyone else’s too.
The undocumented, the unhoused—
many won’t hear the news until the fire is at their door, until no other choice is left.
The evacuation happened in phases.
It’s still happening today.
But people use us as an excuse to spread their agenda anyway.
The fire isn’t out yet,
and they’re already adding
political gas to the flame.
If we extracted all the courage from our keyboards,
maybe people would stop viewing life as just
some video game.
The man around the corner
carries water like it’s all he owns.
At this point, it might be.
“Make sure to charge your phones.” The sky is crying ash.
The scent of burnt cardboard hits us in the face.
We were lucky.
Only some extra ash drifted into our place.
But I stare at the ash
like it’s all the memories burned,
thinking of all the people who just lost the future
they sacrificed so much to earn.
