Literary Contributions

Unfathomable, I realize, from the luxury of
a home with hot water and a comfortable bed.

Healthy food at hand. Natural beauty

abounding. What cost you may have incurred.

Did you give up everything? Leave your business?

Pay exorbitant bribes and pay-offs to coyotes?

Only to have arrived at this impasse. Lured by

stories of freedom, opportunity. A safer life for

your children. Those children perhaps in cages

two states away. Or already absorbed into

the dysfunction of a crumbling system that has

misplaced them entirely. I cannot imagine any positive

emotion. Only fury, frustration, fear, and despair over

so much lost, including hope and so many dreams.

And then, trauma fatigue that can remain for years.

And yet, in my time in the Juarez tent camps,

I saw only hopeful open smiles. I wanted so badly

to say in Spanish that you are welcomed here

by so many of us. That we feel shame for our

government’s treatment of our brothers.

That we know the culpability of the

horrors you are fleeing.

And yet, there are those who trust the lies.

The wrong-headed policies. The removal

of dignity. The belief in mine, but not yours.

They have forgotten themselves immigrants.

To a country built on the backs of slave labor.

The list of contributions is truly endless.

At this crucial crossroads in history,

it is time for so much repair and reconciliation.

Welcome and collaboration.

Now, we cannot look away.

— Pamela Warren Williams