Sarah Kay

And so we asked folks to write in with their very specific current heartache or heart question.

And I tried to find them a poem for their troubles.

Thank you for writing this prompt.

The poem that I chose for you is one of my favorite poems.

It's by the poet Safia Elhillo, who's a Sudanese-American poet.

And her poem is called Self-Portrait with No Flag.

I pledge allegiance to my homies.

to my mother's small and cool palms, to the gap between my brother's two front teeth and to my grandmother's good brown hands, good, strong brown hands gathering my bare feet in her lap.

I pledge allegiance to the group text.

I pledge allegiance to laughter and to all the boys I have a crush on.

I pledge allegiance to my spearmint plant, to my split ends, to my grandfather's brain and gray left eye.

I come from two failed countries, and I give them back.

I pledge allegiance to no land, no border cut by force to draw blood.

I pledge allegiance to no government, no collection of white men carving up the map with their pens.

I choose the table at the Waffle House with all my loved ones crowded into the booth.

I choose the shining dark of our faces through a thin sheet of smoke, glowing dark of our faces slick under layers of sweat.

I choose the world we make with our living, refusing to be unmade by what surrounds us.

I choose us, gathered at the lakeside, the light glinting off the water and our laughing teeth, and along the living dark of our hair.

And this is my only country.

Certainly.