Writing workout for Motherland; Writers’ Workshop
– Set a timer to 15 minutes & write –
Write a letter to your motherland telling it how you feel, what you wish for it, is there something you want to apologize about to it? Recall memories, visually, to elaborate on your thoughts.
Example:
Dear L,
It took me years to write about you, and even more to write toyou, but here I am. I am writing to you, because it seems we are at a crossroad. Long-distance has never been easy, but something about you keeps bringing me back. You call for me when you wake in slumber after rubble has taken your cities, your children. You call for me when everything is fine just to say “Won’t you come over? I’ve poured the coffee, and the sea is soft this morning…”
I know it hurt when I called you toxic a few years ago, wrote about you in my blog for the whole world to see, but I didn’t lie. Maybe the easier choice would be to walk away, to move to another land, to hide in the privilege that is dual nationality and wait as one of my two passports expires. Watch dust cover over its cider, coughing the way old parents do after smoking far too many cigarettes while waiting for their children to return. Waiting. Waiting, as their children build lives far far away, come once a year if they’re lucky, to embrace their parent’s palms, and follow the lines on their hands.
To draw a map on their hands, land on a heartbeat and say “Here, mama, here, baba, I live here, I love here, I will come back, for good… one day.”
I am sorry I keep hurting you like that. I am saddened that you keep hurting me like this. Why won’t you let me leave? Must you call the second I start to move on? Must you send me photos of the new “I love Saida” installation? Must you tell me that there is a new restaurant 10 minutes away from where I was saying what I thought would be my last prayers, a little over 10 years ago? Must you tell me how life moved on? Must you remind me that I have not? Must your sea swallow all the garbage, and still breath into the sky “Hello, I am hurting. Will you love me, still?”
Must you keep texting me every time I go on to a new place? Every time I begin to build blocks. Must you remind me how the land I am from is the one that lets me exist, must you remind me, that you are so integral to my being, that leaving you won’t let you leave me. Must you make it so damn difficult to escape? I remain. Exhausted, wounded, hopeful, I remain. I remain on the cusp of coming back, soon, some day, just not quite now.
With all the love,
Dana S.
The writing workout has been developed and written by Dana Seif, the founder of The Poetry Passport. You can find her on Instagram here.
The Poetry Passport 