For my sister-in-law who was just denied an emergency visa to see her dying father in the United States.
Potential Immigrant
She cannot sit on his bedside
and feed him his final meals,
or sleep close to him and hear him snore.
These are moments she cannot have.
She will never again speak into his ear
her new language of devotion,
never hold his shaking hand
as it quiets, grips her hand, and falls limp.
She will not hear his last breath sigh out of him
and escape into the air she breathes.
She lost him already, a touch, a kiss,
a final word she cannot utter over a phone.
She cannot skip this border, or swim across the ocean.
Denied, to hold her dying father in her arms,
by an impatient glance, a stamp, a rustle of paperwork.
These are moments she cannot have,
by the decree of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one Nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for none.
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