To My Boricua in Exile

Ay corazón,

I know the ache. 

The kind that hums in your ribs when coquí songs haunt your dreams, 

when the smell of plantains frying 

feels like a ghost brushing your hair.

You didn't leave; 

you were pulled away— 

by storms with names, 

by silence wearing a suit and tie, 

by a system that swore you were too much and not enough in the same breath.

But hear me, mi gente: 

you are not lost. 

You are not less Boricua because your feet touch foreign ground. 

Your exile does not erase your essence— 

it carves you into a deeper kind of patriot. 

The kind that remembers with reverence. 

The kind that fights in secret. 

The kind that cries in Spanish and dreams in resistance.

Puerto Rico lives in you. 

In the way you season your grief with sofrito. 

In the way you raise your children to speak of ancestors and oceans. 

In the way you never let them forget that we are not a colony in our souls.

You are the bridge between what was 

and what must still be. 

Even if your hands can’t touch the sand, 

even if you light your candles from far away— 

your love is real, your longing sacred.

And when the island calls you home 

in prayer, in poem, in passing wind— 

answer with your heart. 

Even if your body can't return, 

your spirit already has.

We are a people who survive storms, 

but more than that— 

we are the storm’s memory, 

its lesson, 

its legacy.

And so are you. 

Boricua siempre. 

Desde lejos, 

con el alma entera.