the country breaks, but only in one direction
my mother says never leave your chopsticks standing in rice,
says it looks too much like incense for the dead.
(i press my hands together & pray anyway—
not for the dead, but for the dying,
for the ones who never learned the difference.)
in a city i’ve never touched, a woman
bites her tongue clean off—another language
lost to the teeth. the headlines say disputed land,
say both sides have suffered,
i am made of countries that no longer exist.
lines that shift like salt in water.
(watch how a map crumbles when you hold it too tight.)
a house becomes rubble. (they call it collateral.)
a name sinks to the ocean floor. (they call it necessary.)
(tell me—what do you call a history that doesn’t want you?)
the news says the land is disputed,
says both sides have suffered,
but the bullets are not balanced, the bodies are not even.
a man walks into a grocery store and does not walk out.
a child grows up with a flag for a shadow.
& the news calls it unrest, unfortunate,
that it is complicated while the ground splits open beneath us.
my mother says to pray with both hands.
but who do you pray to when god has a passport?
(tell me—where is the country in my blood? where does the exile end?)
i sharpen my name between my teeth,
write it in the margins,
& wait for the war to find me.