I contemplate
an early exit
in sparkly,
silver
shoes.
Heart over head
and hand over heart –
I look
so American.
And you,
standing
across the way,
are small
with humility.
Your callused fingers,
bathed
in sunlight and industry,
touch me
with a softness
I can never return.
Bless fragility.
Its anxious self
quaking
behind the ego.
The quiver,
the tremble
cracking open my lips.
A fault
from which
the gargled vowels erupt.
Words spill out
over all
the pretty
conventions,
then settle,
holding us
here
in this moment
where we are briefly
familiar.
You,
my mother,
who keeps
the crow’s feet
to remind her
of flight,
whose freckles
punctuate
the summer sky,
who knows
more tones
than the pianist,
speak
with bars
between your teeth.
Songs
of mangrove trees
and lotus ponds.
Yes,
bless the summer.
And I,
your incomprehensible
child,
tongue-twisted
and teary-eyed,
have only
broken language
to offer.
But bless this language,
its ebb and flow.
How it shrinks
from the mouth
to grow
in the ear,
unapologetically
incomplete,
slicing,
dicing,
clipping
the old
ends off,
pushing,
pulling,
perverting,
the speech
into something
wholly
new.
May its sound
always evolve
but its color
stain
forever.
Bless it despite its ugliness.
Bless it
anyway.