Dedication — For Those Who Still Read The Signs
This is for the ones who grew up on street lights,
not screen time, who knew you don’t walk into
someone’s house and start rearranging the furniture.
For the kids who learned “thank you” and
“please” in whatever tongue the neighborhood
spoke, because respect was cheaper than a
broken nose.
For the generation that watched factories close,
borders blur, and somehow got told they were
the problem for wanting one damn place to feel
like home.
If you came here to be offended instead of
understanding how the hell we got this way,
this is not your altar, and I am not your priest.
Prologue — Welcome to the House You Didn’t Build
We grew up in a country that felt like a beat-up
rental: carpet stained, doors kicked, but still
somehow ours because our sweat paid the rent.
We were told this place was a melting pot, but
nobody mentioned someone still has to wash
the dishes, take out the trash, and pay the light
bill while everyone else stirs.
Then one day you look around and realize half
the room is yelling that the house should change
to match the neighborhood they left behind—same
rules, same language, same culture—just with a
better zip code and more Wi‑Fi.
You try to say, “Hey, maybe when you move into a
place, you at least learn where the switches are
and how to say hello,” and suddenly you’re the
villain in somebody’s social media sermon.
We used to call it manners; now they call it hate,
because nothing scares people more than a boundary
spoken out loud.
Poem — House Rules, Mother Tongue
You don’t walk into a stranger’s home, kick off your shoes on their coffee table, and tell them the TV’s on the wrong channel. You don’t spit on the wallpaper, insult the photos on the mantle, then demand they hang your family portrait where the grandparents used to be.
But here you are on the porch we grew up sweeping, telling us the paint color offends you. You hate the music in our kitchen, can’t stand the way we say our vowels, think our jokes are too sharp, our history too loud, our language too “aggressive” for the delicate glass of your feelings.
Funny thing though — when we go to your countries, we’re handed a list of rules before customs.
Cover this.
Don’t say that.
Don’t stand here.
Don’t drink that.
Learn the phrases, respect the culture, or get ready to find out how fast a welcome mat turns into a trapdoor.
We remember that. We remember practicing phrases in borrowed tongues just to not get stared down in a corner store, smiling through broken grammar because it was their house, their air, their rhythm. We bent, because that’s what guests do.
But somehow, when the plane lands here, gravity flips.
Now we’re expected to adjust our calendar to your holidays, our menus to your comfort foods, our jokes to your sensitivities, our laws to your “lived experience.” You want Spanish on the signs, your script on the forms, your customs in the schools, and our kids memorizing your myths while ours get called outdated and “problematic.”
You didn’t escape a country. You packed it in your carry-on and are shocked it doesn’t slide straight onto our flagpole.
Here’s the thing — and no, it’s not polite, and no, I don’t care:
If you come to a house, you learn the house rules.
You don’t light a candle with our curtains. You don’t argue with the locks. You don’t scream “oppression” because we don’t redecorate overnight in the image of where you ran from.
You want to be here? Beautiful. Grab a chair, learn the language, swear at the politicians in the same consonants we use. Laugh with us, fight with us, build with us, bleed with us.
We don’t hate accent or origin; we hate entitlement dressed up as virtue.
But if every dinner turns into a lecture about how our table offends you, how our prayers are wrong, how our words are violence because they aren’t your words — then the door that opened can also close.
Not because we want you dead. Not because we think we’re better. But because we refuse to become visitors in the only place we’ve ever belonged.
You chose this house. You crossed oceans to knock. So don’t stand in the doorway telling the walls to move.
If you can’t stand the way we sound when we claim our own roof, there are airports just as open as that border was.
Epilogue — The Guest Room Isn’t the Throne
With time, you realize it isn’t about purity or
bloodlines; it’s about the simple, brutal math
of respect.
We’re not guarding some museum piece America,
frozen in amber with mullets and cassette tapes;
we’re just tired of being told our own language is
a flaw in our birth certificate.
Every generation loses something and gains something,
but ours watched the word “home” get cross-examined
until it meant nothing but guilt.
The lesson isn’t “stay out”—it’s “come in right.” Learn the
tongue, learn the story, carry your own past without erasing
ours.
And if that sounds like hate to you, maybe you weren’t looking
for a home—just another stage to demand applause.
Lullaby — For Those Who Still Knock
Hush now, old house, under star-scratched skies,
creak your floors, whisper soft goodbyes.
Porch light glows for the humble who call,
knock with ears open, not fists on the wall.
Learn our tongue, share our bread and our rain,
carry your past, don’t torch ours with shame.
Rock the cradle through factory dust,
home ain’t a lease—it’s roots in the rust.
But stomp with fire, demand we bend low?
Road’s always waiting, wanderer, go.
Sleep now, sweet house, we’ll guard what’s our own,
scarred palms and truth carved deep in the stone.
Hush… hush… the threshold knows.
Who learns… and who goes.
“The fire didn’t consume me. I became it.”