the view from up here

after i cry my throat raw, i sit down in my mother’s stead

to braid my head. my hair is thin & fickle like my father’s

where he is from, ocean foam blows like fresh white snow

scattered by the wind, dollops of icy-thick

salt burning in the many recesses of a history

i can never know. but i do know

never before me was there someone like me—

the earth i’m born from is culture-less,

a patchwork of displacement & discoloration

my ancestors do not rest in the same place

they do not share a language, a skin color, much less

a reason to look down at me

but if they do

i hope they see a river. waterways alien to one another

converging to meet & flow slow like lava

only to empty into the valleys of my mother’s land

where the soil is so rich, it is black like

licorice, like her skin

and i try to sound out the words of her native womb—

to make sense of this absence inside of me

but i butcher them

later, i learn in some worlds my name means, “daughter

of mars”; “wished for child”; “miriam, as in mary,

as in the holy virgin” see? i’m obliged to be the progeny

of foreign oddities. but inheritance is worn too thinly;

it loses meaning in geography, transits, marriages,

airports & homes i didn’t get to keep

but the maps lead to me. when my ancestors

look down, i hope they don’t mind the desecration or

the continued devastation