Poem by Jowanah Majeed

Roots That Walk

I am the song of a thousand footsteps,

echoing across oceans I never sailed.

My name is stitched with syllables

from lands my hands have never held—

yet still, I carry their scent in my soul.

I wear two worlds like a woven robe:

one stitched by ancestors with sun-warmed thread,

the other sewn by city streets and lecture halls—

both fitting,

both foreign,

both mine.

My tongue speaks in echoes:

spices from my grandmother’s kitchen

whisper between academic words.

I translate my heart daily—

not between languages,

but between selves.

Am I enough of one?

Too much of another?

I have danced on that invisible line,

my shadow splitting in two.

But when I close my eyes,

I see a bridge made of questions—

and I am the answer,

walking.

Some call us lost,

but we are layers.

Time travelers in family trees.

Not rootless,

but rooted in motion—

seeded in memory,

flowering in now.

Let me tell you:

the soil remembers,

even if we do not.

And still,

we bloom.

(Second Generation British Pakistani)