Nationality
by Tegan Smyth

Your mother’s womb
was your first nation state.
Where her body started and ended
was how you defined your borders.
The nerve endings of her skin – the
tectonic plates separating you
from the earth rumbling below her feet.
Her eyes were
the ocean, without the notion of boats.

Nine cycles
of waxing and waning moons,
You move with her
in ignorance of the lines between countries.
You pass the invisible boundaries,
demarcating one place from another,
without the construct of nationality.

Your mother’s womb
was your first nation state
before you were born to the knowledge
that to belong to a country is a privilege
arbitrated by treatise and
black letters and
enforced through barbed wire and walls.
It’s not always
a guarantee
either.
It is said that a person
may not be arbitrarily deprived of nationality
and yet, ten million people
walk this earth, unknown to any country.

When you open your eyes to this world
you chance upon a place where
nothing is guaranteed.
Not the land, the earth rumbling
or the ocean.
Perhaps
you will never cast your eyes
on the places your mother called home

because home only exists in memory.
And when her body expires
so too does your first country.

Tegan Smyth is a writer and finance professional based in Hong Kong. She is the founder of a recently formed organisation that seeks to improve the lives of Hong Kong refugees over shared experiences; namely, through food.