Home is a place we return to,
a comfort we carry,
a knowing that never leaves.
“Where are you from?”
A question I answer differently
than my mother and my father.
At just twenty-three,
they chose to walk away
from a system that could not offer
their children room to rise.
They left in hope of something better,
leaving pieces of their hearts
in a land that shaped them—
a land that no longer feels like theirs
because they had to grow beyond it.
But for our chance to dream without limits,
to be met with fairness, not ceilings,
to have the world open its doors—
my parents laid down pieces
that made them Pakistani.
And with every step forward we take, we remember > they were brave enough to go first.
