My people make

deserts and promises. 
I can live quite beautifully in words

assembled and disassembled so easily,

as if we conquered the world with riddles. 
I once lived on an island

with no word for thank-you,
this is the art of small places. 
When the colonialists came

they took the teak and sandalwood and cinnamon,

and left a please and a thank-you

where once the forest stood. 
My father left his island, cold,

where the people speak like songs,

and talk in stories,

and whisper that the name of their city is a lie.
I was raised in a forest without trees,

a forest that existed only in the memory of birds

they would come winter mornings

and suck dew from the grass.
My mother’s people, from the high country

lived in a place once called after a river,

but now bears the name of a long-dead colonel

in a battle that only the cannon survive.
This town

is called by a word

we don’t understand,

a symbol

carved from a language

expelled from the landscape. 
The name may mean ‘red earth’

or ‘bend in the river’,

or ‘where the wide waters meet’.
It could be a crooked curse

or a lullaby,

a passport

or a prayer.