Is this the home I wanted

I crossed the waves to find a place,
Yet carry shadows on my face.
A borrowed sky, a foreign street,
A smile that feels not fully sweet.

I wonder what the natives see,
When strangers stand where they should be.
Do they feel their homeland fade,
Beneath the lives that others made?

For I would ache, if in my land,
New voices came with ruling hands.
If they walked proud and claimed my ground,
Would kindness still in me be found?

Why must the world be split this way,
With some who leave and some who stay?
Why cross the seas, why lose our own,
To build a life far from our home?

Had history chosen kinder roads,
Had no one carried exile’s loads,
I might have stayed where roots run deep,
And never cried these thoughts to sleep.

Yet here I stand, between two shores,
Not fully theirs, not mine before.
A migrant heart, both lost and free,
Still searching for where home may be.