Where Are You From?

Where are you from?

A saffron place where incense swirls

Grasping at dancing words around me, but hearing melodies instead

Each grain of rice a creamy building block, each titian slice of orange tightly wedging the spaces of the in-between where I exist.

Where am I from?

An ebony head of hair painted every shade of the rainbow

Savagely stripped of its inkiness

Slowly letting the roots grow in, like a topsy turvy jade tree.

Don’t ask where I’m from, but where I am.

Standing face-to-face with who I’m told to be

Seeing younger versions of myself, through a filtered lens

Gently ladling out traditions, careful not to spill a golden drop.