On the border

My borders are so open these days. So many needs, so much emotion, the fences and high walls can’t hold it all back. The guards work overtime but it still climbs over, pours through, wanders the barrenness, or gets caught and corralled and sent back home, only to run again tomorrow. There is no control, just the knowledge that the border should be policed. Should be, normally would be, but now there is only an attempt at basic maintenance of a daily routine.

Sometimes though, on random days, less desperation slips through. I don’t know why. Maybe the guards are more fully staffed, the equipment all cleaned and in working order. Or maybe the anxiety that presses against the fence is less than usual, calmed, resting, on holiday. Could it really be because of the increased border patrol, at the ready? Or is the need actually lessened, better managed in its native land?

Can we look through the fence to see what is there, to identify the cause of the anxious refugee tide? Could there be fewer guards by lessening the need for the migration? By addressing the poverty and desperation at its source? By understanding the problem, and by dealing with it?

No wave crashing at the checkpoints, climbing the wall, becoming entangled on the barbed wire and caught on the shards of glass that crown the barriers. No fortified perimeter, no guards, no fear, no terror. Just a border that functions as the abstract boundary that it is, between here and there, in and out, a line in the desert.

My borders are so open these days.