Migration

By | 1 May 2021
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;
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