Our Homeland We Call Home

I tape the ripped corners of your picture
into one ragged piece that never seems right.

Wrinkled due to the passage of time,
contaminated with coffee stains

on your paper skin. Your veins map your
glass heart. Torn, exposing the corruption

so well-layered under an aesthetic picture.
Broken, like the promises you had made.

This is our homeland we call safety.
This is our homeland we call freedom.

I wonder, how can both coexist if forces
beyond our control keep us in control?

I know I forced the ragged pieces
to form an incomplete picture—

a picture that would never
represent itself at its foundation.

I am hoping that someday
my voice will be heard

and this picture will be fixed;
after all, I’m only a lost child.

This is our homeland we call home.

By Jimin Lee

Biography:

Jimin Lee is a Korean-American writer living in Seoul, South Korea. As a published author on various platforms, her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Crashtest Magazine, The Daphne Review, and The Rising Phoenix Review, among others. She is the founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Ideate Review, a literary magazine that recognizes works of creative writing and art relating to global issues and identity. In addition, she is an alumnus of the Juniper Institute for Young Writers. She enjoys learning about the world around her and writing about it.