It is inevitable.
Sometimes we break
Like teeth and promises
Bones and hearts.
Branch and ground.
Chaos and code.
Habits and faith.
Sometimes we break open
like pods and doors
dawn and silence.
Sometimes we break apart
sometimes we break down.
We are just pieces getting ready to
Disassemble ourselves into a fire.
The future won’t have us in it.
If my ancestors taught me anything
It is that fire creates new life
An affirmation to let go,
To make way for something else to shape, to take
on something that we have not felt before.
Maybe a new sound or one that you have always craved for like,
Sunrays stroking your skin.
Maybe a new song.
Maybe a new feeling
or a different way to understand
what we have held once before
only now,
its heavy is new,
its angles indent differently on our palm,
its colors
its smell, a little bit familiar and reminds us
of home.
Home has a simple recipe.
Some call for more laughing parents than canned meat,
Some call for cups and cups of giggling grandfathers in bouncy castles
Dashes of hand-holding
Peeled Korean drama marathons
Handfuls of lullabies once forgotten
And bowls of cut fruit, spilling over, handed to you with luscious words like,
I’m sorry
or sweet juicy ones like,
I love you.
But sometimes the ingredients are hard to come by,
and you’ll have to go look.
Float to the surface of your first memory
When you were in water
Scraping scales with the naga
It left lines on your torso
to keep your secrets
to remember your purpose after you’ve sprouted feet.
Listen for chocolate honeycomb.
Sweet buzzing that swarms across your chest
And warms your belly.
And lights up fauna and flora
transplanted here, from your motherland.
Be the water they’ll need to survive in this strange soil.
If your well becomes dry, I invite you
to timewalk with me
to that moment when first you laughed.
Remember?
The unnecessary amount of time you took to consider
how many butts a buffalo might have
(One is not the right answer.)
Come and timewalk with me
To contemplate how many oceans live inside the heart.
Every time I break, I trace the root
of my thumb
Fly around with mudpuppies
Shuck out of my water body
And dance forward into myself.
When you reach the edge of the sea
Or hunger at the cusp of a vision,
Let a dragon fruit sing you home.
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