roots
“Roots” was written in conversation with “Nisei: Second-Generation Japanese American” by James Masao Mitsui.
When a boy grew out of a rice field
they say he pulled himself out of the loam,
and in the dark, he walked to the village
just over the hill.
It was quiet.
The children crept up with the sun
and asked him how his hair sprouted.
They touched and fawned over his
roots.
He laughed.
As they circled him, a girl asked
if he needed water and pulled
him away towards the woods,
through bramble until they found
a stream.
She asked, “Where are you from?”
as he sat at the edge of the bank
and seeped
into the water.
His roots stretched out from his feet
and he answered,
“Oh, you can find me
and my family downstream.”
st. martin de porres - museo de momias, guanajuato
Pressed up against glass, would you cradle
Mother’s tears when she visits on the weekends?
Should I wait— broken fingers
whisper, flaked skin and amber fingernails
only hesitate.
You listen.
tomato jam
for the boy who’s floating
you always told me to write—
create poems, you’d say.
and you would look at me
eyes wide,
half-bearded
and say life is full of stories—
fractured stories.
little glitches and memory blips,
but everyone has something
worth sharing.
you are worth sharing.
do you think this is just a glitch?
or do you think
i mean it?
hands frozen across your chest
you are
the fat melting—
what’s left
of the burning
bone
and
dust.
who would have ever thought
you, breathless still
would live in me.
you told me to write.
and for the past four years,
i have avoided a pen.
a keyboard.
i have avoided you.
but what can you do
when you pour yourself into
stupid multiverse theories
looking somewhere else,
anywhere else,
for a world
where you are still alive,
and perhaps living
a life
full of love.
you are still here
in the stories i write,
a ghost living on the
edges of my
sight.