That the force of the border could have blinded me to that glaringly obvious and simple truth reveals, in turn, something else: its tentacles had me so tightly gripped that I couldn’t see its power. “Walls cut deep into us,” writes political philosopher Wendy Brown, “into our psyche, our souls.” And I know, too, that I don’t want something so deep inside me that so profoundly alters—that so poisons—who I am and how I am toward other people.
