Richard Blanco - Non-Music, American Literature

Como Tú / Like You / Like Me

2 Plays

{for the D.A.C.A DREAMers and all our nation's immigrants} . . . my veins don't end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life . . . . . . mis venas no terminan en mí sino en la sange unánime de los que luchan por la vida . . . —Roque Dalton, Como tú Como tú, I question history's blur in my eyes each time I face a mirror. Like a mirror, I gaze into my palm a wrinkled map I still can't read, my lifeline an unnamed road I can't find, can't trace back to the fork in my parents' trek that cradled me here. Como tú, I woke up to this dream of a country I didn't choose, that didn't choose me—trapped in the nightmare of its hateful glares. Como tú, I'm also from the lakes and farms, waterfalls and prairies of another country I can't fully claim either. Como tú, I am either a mirage living among these faces and streets that raised me here, or I'm nothing, a memory forgotten by all I was taken from and can't return to again. Like memory, at times I wish I could erase the music of my name in Spanish, at times I cherish it, and despise my other syllables clashing in English. Como tú, I want to speak of myself in two languages at once. Despite my tongues, no word defines me. Like words, I read my footprints like my past, erased by waves of circumstance, my future uncertain as wind. Like the wind, como tú, I carry songs, howls, whispers, thunder's growl. Like thunder, I'm a foreign-borne cloud that's drifted here, I'm lightning, and the balm of rain. Como tú, our blood rains for the dirty thirst of this land. Like thirst, like hunger, we ache with the need to save ourselves, and our country from itself.

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Writers: Richard Blanco

Como Tú / Like You / Like Me

Como Tú / Like You / Like Me

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Credits