mum explains that when a human touches a baby bird its mother rejects it; i confess,

i walk my smell of tiger balm back to the tree anyway, chopstick in my hair too;

i think of bhanu kapil, who writes: it’s exhausting to be a guest in somebody else’s house forever;

my mum is a lady of science, so i use her mouth: the universe being infinite there are many

chances for our successes; she asks me to stay, then, and it’s possible

we make the kitchen smell like nations while birds outside hit us with dreams;

there’s many ways it could go;

mum asks me to stay, then, and we cry, and avoid the kitchen to sit with the birds; or else I stay,

and no one cries and I tell her about being labelled a stranger;

i stay, and don’t even speak; just toss a coin and watch it spin up into the sky;

after dinner, mum walks me to the spot where gold dips back to us;

it’s possible her watch is gold, or else

a trick of light; these days I bathe in milk;

in the shadows my skin is copper;

my mother is speaking

but her words are distant as birdsong; my father calls her

the most exotic bird 

he ever held; how I wear his easy tongue and new name,

and kiss my mother, as any daughter does;