Crossed Borders

Created by
Miha Isik,
Fellow, Caring Cultures 2025

Published
February 6, 2026

Crossed Borders

Crossed Borders is a piece that explores radical care through the lens of migration: how love, instinct, and inherited memory are carried across distances, and how care becomes a deliberate, powerful act rather than just a means of survival.

Rooted in Turkish and Middle Eastern sounds and performed entirely by an immigrant crew, the piece blends traditional instrumentation with poetic storytelling to reflect on the diasporic experience.

Miha, singer-songwriter
Sümeyra E. Tanıl, violinist-composer

48kHz, 24-Bit

Lyrics to Crossed Borders

I crossed borders with things I couldn’t name
Things passed down like prayer beads
like recipes like birth certificates, folded too many times
the kind of care you never learn, just know that which demands legacy
of loving each other into our freedoms, and our prayers,
and the quiet futures we whisper about.

I crossed borders to find love
Love that changes time
Light that grounds the heart
Where justice underlies
I crossed borders to find love

Had I realized
Love had crossed with me
Love was with me all along
See I inherited the instincts of a people who never felt safe unpacking
like choosing silence
like saving the truth
for when he can hold it
(like) using plural
(like) “We’re on the way”
So you don’t have to say
that you were alone
that you were all alone
they detained her.
That you ran.
And-when you meet someone like you, you ask about family
No one says e-e-everything
But you know what they mean.

crossed borders and found love
crossed borders and found love

No longer survival
but an act of will
to hold the door open
for the ones still crossing
Far from home
Passing down the legacy of love…

Care Crossed With Me

I crossed borders with things I couldn’t name
Things passed down
like prayer beads
like recipes
like birth certificates, folded too many times
the kind of care you never learn, just know
(like) not saying sorry for someone’s pain but
“Hayırlısı olsun” (Bil khayri alaik)
May what comes be better
May what hurts make way for something softer.
“Allah razı olsun” (Allah yarza alaik)
May God be pleased with you,
Not just thanks, but a blessing
for something you gave that wasn’t small.

I inherited the instincts of a people who never felt safe unpacking
like choosing silence
like saving the truth
for when he can hold it
(like) using plural
“We’re on the way”
So you don’t have to say
You were alone
That they detained her.
That you ran.
And when you meet someone like you, you ask about family
No one says everything
But you know what they mean.

Between the zippers and the prayers
You find space for what matters
like a changing room in a mall
like grass
like a plane, gentle hand gestures, subtle bowing
That folded prayer mat
at the bottom of someone’s bag
(like) replacing numbers with prayer hours
Never 1 p.m., it’s Dhuhr
Never 9, it’s Isha… and taraweeh
when it’s the Hot Month
Care has a schedule—
and it always remembers where God fits.

Some things were never meant to be declared
But I brought them anyway
like my names
that hard V between the A and the L
that soft fabric which speaks before I do
almost apologetic at the face of every act of kindness
like a small miracle I’m not owed
like grocery lists written in two languages
and mouths that switch mid-sentence
where the younger becomes the eldest.

Beady eyes in a big jacket
translating at the border,
at the immigration office,
justifying why we cannot go back—
Safety is not a feeling,
but a claim you must make into a case file
It’s me
and her
and the daughter of the neighbor who briefly moved into the upstairs host’s living room
and her younger siblings
relaying persecution
before even knowing how to spell it.

Five years—blink—ten years
Refugee—blink—citizen
It’s not a rebirth but a reckoning
to keep what cannot be replaced
No longer survival but an act of will
to hold the door open
for the ones still crossing
Just like someone once stood
with their back to the wind for you
Radical care demands legacy
of loving each other
into our freedoms,
and our prayers,
and the quiet futures
we whisper about.

About the creator