We sit in the conference,
trying to be inconspicuous at first,
while security glares at us,
our clothes too wrinkled.

The man on the microphone
talks about our side
the way we talk about their side.
"They are taking our rights away.
We have to fight back,"
he says,
heart-felt,
And I don't like sides.
And I don't believe in them.
but I wonder for a moment
if we are just their opposite,
their symmetry,
and that is all.

The man with the microphone has a story,
I think,
and his story wrote his speech,
and my story gave birth to this moment,
to my short hair and thrift store shirt,
to this chant inside my head
that I'll shout in an hour.
We all come from stories, I think.

But then I think of the border,
a line drawn by Power,
onto bodies.
And I think of the stories
I have heard and read
of those who crossed it.

The desert is a myth to me,
but to my friends,
it is a memory
they were forced to face.

To stumble from the desert into prison,
into tents too hot to breathe,
into a "concentration camp"--

This suffering doesn't have a side.
It doesn't have a politic.
It has a beating heart.
It has a story.
It has a voice.

And so we will stand up and shout
when the sheriff is speaking,
even though we are shaking,
even though we know we will be tackled to the ground.

We will be dragged away,
a sheet over our head,
and we will shout.

Not because there is a line
in my heart
between us and them,
but because we don't let lines silence suffering.

The border has tall walls,
but still,
it is not solid because it stands on living earth.
The border wavers like our strength.
The border shivers like our hands.
The border gives birth like our stories.
And so we shout.