Ammar Alshukry – I Promise – Refugee poem

Ammar Alshukry
AI: Summary ©
The speaker describes his experience of missing his fatherhood and feeling responsibility for his actions. He describes his desire to be a "stedler than air" and his desire to live lifelessly in a place where the sounds of weapons are more familiar than ice cream trucks. He also describes his mother and heart and promises the other person that they are waiting for.
AI: Transcript ©
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Everything I know about fatherhood I learned from you. It was an experiment from the time the doctor placed you in my arms. I hadn't slept for two days up until that point, living off of coffee, adrenaline and fear. But all of that disappeared when I realized that you're here. And for the first time in my life, I felt responsibility that had me nervous and burden, but it was the most beautiful burden every day was an adventure, I missed your first smile. And so I promised in that moment to be the cause of a million others your laughter was music to my ears. As a boy, I always wanted to be a superhero. And I never felt more like one than when I wiped away your tears rescuing you daily from

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despair, or when I mean nightmares disappear. Because no monster could ever dare approach you when I was near or when you scream that Bob is here, as you ran to the door to make the worst of days turn into a celebration, if only for a moment.

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You had a superpower to my own little Jubilee. And every day was an adventure or a mystery, new words and new phrases. I was amazed as you put them together walking than running, but always lighter than air, always lighter than air. Oh is the light of my existence and the laughter of my heart on the first day of school. I promised you we'd never apart. But sometimes wounds run deep.

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And sometimes we make promises that even superheroes can't keep. Maybe you didn't realize it when you couldn't go to school anymore. And we went to live with family all the way by the shore that we were running away from more. When the months turn into years, I'm sure you came to know I hope you remember what our house looked like. Before we moved again before the camp before the tents before the cold when you had a room you called your own, and you never counted your clothes, I need you to know that you had a house you called a home and a father who would provide the world if he could make it so I'm sorry that I couldn't. That your toys went from dolls and cups to clouds and rocks

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and such that you played so little, and you walked so much. And I can't explain the feeling of knowing that your children aren't limited by their dreams. Although their dreams are so big. They have them gazing at the sky, laughing at the stars praying that they can fly No.

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Their dreams are limited by the opportunities that don't exist. So you cry when they are born for all the dreams that they will miss. And you have to make choices that seem dipped in poison to live lifelessly in a place where the sounds of bombs are more familiar than those of ice cream trucks are to volunteer for your heart to be extracted and move to another country without you where you can't shelter it from the cold or protect it like it's gold because they can only take two.

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And so for now, it's your mom and you

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don't you worry. I'm right there behind you. No matter where you go. You know your daddy's gonna find you know, earth and no sky, no borders and no lines can ever divide or keep us apart. For you are my daughter and you are my heart. I promise. I promise

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