Transplant

The first winter in this country

my breath looked unfamiliar,

little ghosts escaping into a sky

that didn’t know my name.

~

I walked streets of obedient trees

and clean, reflective glass,

holding coffee too sweet, too thin,

missing home:

~

thick tea in a chipped glass,

the courtyard with cracked tiles,

pigeons arguing on hot roofs,

a neighbor’s radio leaking love songs

through sunburnt walls,

a language that can curse you

and cradle you

in the same sentence.

~

Where I’m from,

joy uses both hands.

You dance, you shout,

you get dragged into circles

by women who hug hard enough

to reset your spine.

Touch is how we say

you exist, stay.

~

Here, I learned to keep my elbows in.

~

At my first summer festival,

music shook the air loose.

Sweat, beer, strangers moving

like a single animal.

A bass drop hit some old part of me

and my body answered before my brain:

I laughed, reached out,

laid my hand on the arm

of the woman beside me,

just a light touch,

a small hey,

you and me, same thunder.

~

She turned to stone under my fingers.

Her smile folded away like a knife.

“Don’t touch me,” she said,

loud enough that the people in front

pretended not to hear.

~

My hand burned all night.

I kept tucking it into my pocket

as if I could hide

the part of me that still believed

touch meant welcome

and not warning.

~

For weeks after, I walked smaller,

a plant left in its plastic pot,

roots circling themselves in apology,

learning the shape of “too much”

in a language without a word

for the kind of lonely

you feel in a crowd.

~

Then, in cramped kitchens

and overfull couches,

I found others with tongues

that carried more than one climate,

who poured tea like home

into mismatched mugs.

People who understood

why my hands spoke first.

~

We compared scars:

the joke that didn’t land,

the name mispronounced into nonsense,

the way our parents called and asked,

“Are you eating?”

instead of “Are you happy?”

~

Something loosened.

My roots stopped asking permission.

They sank into whatever ground

would hold them:

tramlines, rental carpets,

the thin strip of soil by the bus stop

where a stubborn tree

keeps blooming anyway.

~

I still think about her,

that woman at the festival,

how fast her body said no.

Some nights, I press my palm

to the cold window and feel

my grandmother’s laughter

in the bones,

my mother’s worry,

every street I’ve ever left

rising through me like sap.

~

If you ask where I’m from,

I might say “here”

to keep the conversation easy,

but the truth is under my skin:

two countries arguing quietly,

one teaching me to hold back,

one still pushing my hand forward,

~

and somewhere between them,

a small, stubborn root

refusing to let go

of the way we used to touch

just to prove

we were real.

.