Bulbul Isabella (ATHIYA)

Belonging to Nowhere

Added 2025-03-19 03:38:32 +0000 UTC

I sink into the earth. It doesn’t ask who I am. Doesn’t push me away. Just lets me disappear.

I left my country. I moved. Again. And again. Every street, every wall, every face NEW and STRANGE. Tried to make them familiar. Tried to make them mine. Tried to make myself belong. Didn’t work.

An immigrant body is a body in translation. You carry pieces of one place, try to stitch them onto another, but the seams never quite hold. You’re always a little loose, a little frayed.

And you can’t go back. Not really. Even if you set foot there again, you’re a ghost. Too changed. Too foreign.

So you drift. Between places. Between selves. Between what you were and what you’ll never be again. That kind of loneliness is different. Not just sad, but untethered. A fucking free fall with no ground in sight.

So I lay here. The floor takes me. No resistance, no embrace. Just existence.

I don’t belong anywhere. Maybe I never will. But right now, I belong to myself.