Post Diaspora
Elsewhere, butterflies mean something
I cannot remember—luck or life
or death or maybe it depends on
where the fluttering wings appear.
How exhausting (or dangerous)
to forget always what means what
where. How do you say butterfly?
Alitaptap? Tutubi? Or is that
dragonfly? Or lighting bug?
How do you say I’m sorry or I miss you
or I don’t know how not to forget?
*
Today’s wonder: a river that begins
straight up from the ground as if
from nowhere. The trees around it ask—
but, where were you born?
Ultimately, which means more?
The seed’s first wink? Or the root’s first tiptoe?
Parents speak of before: when you were but
a twinkle in your father’s eye. What hope
is born from the dust of those stars.
*
There’s a saying: those who do not swim
deep in the waters from which they came
cannot arrive in the oceans they hope to go to.
My parents began an ocean away
and arrived in a land of lakes and snow.
I’ve been back to their water (is it mine, too?)
but wasn’t a good swimmer.
Everyone spoke underwater; I could only
hold my breath to listen for so long.
I did learn the water carries its own song.
*
The discipline of joy is about survival.
You make your own joy—
this is the work my mother taught me.
Little factory, little mine of reminders—
find, make, joy to sustain multiple lifetimes:
the blanket made beautiful
from patterned found scraps;
the broth of tap water and ginger and bones.
What fullness my mother earned
and could stu√ inside an envelope
to send each month back home.
*
We all carry flags
whether we mean to
or not. I’ve grown more and more
suspicious of nationhood
the more and more I’ve had to
explain my face. I always had
a tough time with placing
my hand over my heart.
Holding it in my palm
was what my parents taught me.
*
My mother says: You are a happy person.
Write poems that show that.
I think she worries
my anger is a reflection
of where she went wrong.
I don’t know how to
make her understand my anger
is a gift that she gave me.
Years of her gazing at the ground,
years of her prayer so that I could
decide to believe or not;
to use my mouth or keep it shut.
*
My mother proofreads my LinkedIn.
Are you stalking me on the internet,
ma? I text an emoji after so she knows
I’m mostly kidding. She sends me a
prayer given to the children of Fatima
by the Virgin Mary. We text this way
when talking makes us sigh or cry
with what we don’t know. Too much
unsaid pinches beneath everything
we utter—our modus operandi—
I love you: you disappoint me: I love
you: you expect too much: I love you:
I say aloud all the wrong
words: I love you.
*
There are debts we carry
inside our insides—
debts that live in the spleen,
the liver, the stomach, the heart.
I think I carry my debts
owed my mother
inside my teeth, which have been
bound and corrected and polished
and whitened, year after year.
My mother’s mouth is full
of white teeth and pink gums
made in a lab, made many years
after the loss of her own born smile.
*
Absence is what took me
so long to name after many years
of scrying the world for answers:
Why does this hollow live
inside my aching throat?
When the anemone’s kisses cling
to my fingertips, what does it mourn?
What is my mother’s greatest fear
and my father’s last legacy?