Arriving to Los Angeles was my dream come true\u2014
\nI held my mother\u2019s hand as we disembarked,
\nwith wide eyes searched for a face I had only seen in pictures,
\nstrained my ears for a voice I\u2019d only heard through a phone receiver
\nduring international calls cut short in haste to save a few cents.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember seeing my father\u2019s face when we finally found each other,
\nbut I remember at eye level the light shade of the brown khakis he wore,
\nbut that could\u2019ve been a memory I made up
\nto make myself feel better about the blur of this day.<\/p>\n
I remember launching myself into his arms, But from then on, I saw. Our new home was one large room. With a bed against the wall and Before I had even heard of the lie of the American Dream, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arriving to Los Angeles was my dream come true\u2014 I held my mother\u2019s hand as we disembarked, with wide eyes searched for a face I had only seen in pictures, strained my ears for a voice I\u2019d only heard through a phone receiver during international…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32250"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33974,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32250\/revisions\/33974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cAhpa!\u201d<\/em>
\nin a voice as joyful and innocent as the first cry of a newborn.<\/p>\n
\nWe passed by countless white cars as I tried to guess which was his,
\nand didn\u2019t even notice the little two-door until he pointed it out.
\nI crawled to sit in the back.<\/p>\n
\ntoo much white space.
\nThis was the life he\u2019d left us for.
\nThat we’d left behind our lives for.<\/p>\n
\nI had the feeling that the dream promised to me
\nwas a sham.<\/p>\n