TO HAVE A BETTER LIFE
I once asked my parents
why they came here—
why they made me an American.
Their voices always gentle, always tired:
“To have a better life.”
But what does better mean
when the price is never feeling at home?
I grew up between asphalt
and the warm, vibrant Caribbean waters—
where my soul learned color,
where the sun touching my skin
felt like language.
My body still craves that heat.
Winter here drains me,
makes my skin crack,
makes my spirit quiet.
In the Caribbean, my thoughts flow freer,
kinder, sweeter.
My hair thrives.
The fruit is richer.
Life laughs louder.
Here, everything feels
a little frozen.
And now the cold has a name
I don’t say out loud.
We learn to look unafraid
Just to make it home.
When I was little,
I thought the world was kind,
that laughter meant happiness.
Maybe it did,
or maybe I just couldn’t see
the quiet fatigue in their bones—
years of holding everything together.
Now I understand:
they never stopped surviving,
even when they smiled.
And I, too, inherited that rhythm—
that in-between.
Half spirit of where I was born,
half dream of where they hoped I’d belong.
I wish I could have learned my culture
in the place my blood remembers—
not through retellings,
not through translation.
I know my roots,
but here they grow through glass:
visible, but untouchable.
America, the promised land,
dressed in neon and hunger.
It feeds on illusion—
asks us to smile for the picture
while we work ourselves invisible.
We share walls and paychecks;
our laughter carries through
paper-thin rooms.
Freedom, they call it.
But I see it now—
this country is a field,
and we are the cattle,
chewing through distraction,
waiting for peace to arrive
like it’s something we can afford.
Sometimes I wish I could tell my parents
that the better life they dreamed of
still feels borrowed.
That I am grateful, yes—
but still searching for rest,
still trying to feel human
in a place that worships exhaustion.
Still learning how to be Caribbean
in a land that asks me to forget it.
Still holding the sun inside me
even when the world around me is cold.
Still trying
to have a better life.
more photos by me, in the Carribean
