My people

are cleaners, taxi drivers, waitresses and strippers.
They bathe the elderly and repair potholes in roads.
They pull (heart) strings to send their children to schools that they can’t afford,
because “education is everything”.
They swallow their pride, forget their egos, grow skin thick as bark, and learn not to fight back.
They smile rarely but laugh easily.
They skype home.
They pray to a God who doesn’t speak English.
They drink home-made spirits and eat white pork-meat sausages. Around tables covered from centre to stomach in make-do food over white lace tablecloths.

My people
held onto their language
through a hundred-and-fifty-years of not existing as a nation.
They rebuilt a city from war-ravaged rubble into an exact replica of its former glory.
They are fathers of modern astronomy, Nobel-prize winning physicists and poets, world famous composers, novelists, film directors and Popes.

My people are my blood.
My blue eyes.
My bone structure and my ashen hair.
My beliefs.
My weaknesses.
My fire and my fight.

My people.

My Poland.

I love you.