The Me who Remains.

The possibilities of loss didn’t include this uprooting,

this stripping away and removing of bricks

that once stood solid inside my walls and now,

await rebuilding of home in a new land.

Once I took for granted the knowing—

the words I spoke, the songs I sang,

the simplicity of cobblestones beneath my feet,

but now, the Self has been called to question

in this vastness that tastes of salt from coast to coast;

where language, like a hard-boiled egg

fills my mouth and my tongue swells

with the effort of unfamiliar;

where each night I cry myself to sleep

and dream of having stayed behind,

like in another dimension where

every decision gives birth

to an alternate Universe—

where I remain intact.

And still, I wake to the screech of magpies

outside our walk-up apartment where I share a

double mattress with my sister and

tell my parents again and again I don’t believe the

evils of communism, the dangers of conformity, and

beg them to please send me back.

To my face they exalt this land of opportunity,

where freedom is working twelve hours shifts at the

coal mine, and waxing floors at the

Provincial Court of Alberta from

four to midnight.

My body creates a phantom illness

that keeps me home from school,

away from the snickers of Junior High girls

who make fun of my silence and

my second-hand clothes.

I eat rye bread smothered thick with honey and

compose long letters in the Czech I know.

I write notes to myself, collect the pain

of displacement like precious gems, examining

each one for lines and cracks and depth of color

like an archaeologist in search of the Me

who remains.