brown hands flipping pages of poetry
you read to me
lips, weighted, moving
like my ama's when she retold the story
of how she walked down a pahad with
mamu in her belly.
your voice
navigating trust with safety
intergenerational secrets
it brings memories.
we are wrapped in
the swamp green of your blanket
swamps are considered transition
zones because both
land and water play
a role
in creating this environment.
like water i spill all over your country
my earth voluntarily sinking
you say my name almost the way
i used to be used to
which is say, right here
you are the country
i run from and towards at the same time.
you hand me a copy of Paulo Friere's
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
in the minutes between you boiling water for tea
and me holding the book-
to love rightly to "preserve" a culture,
to filter out unlovable from lovable
the pedagogy of the plagued "country"
living inside me and those who love me,
oppressors within the lands of the oppressed,
us ungrateful, shame bringing, privileged,
westernized, children of the country
informants of our bravery, misery, poverty to this country
what is the pedagogy for us forever conflicted?
i place the book in my bag.
here again.
we are your soft palms against my coarse legs
momentarily fixated on something
unreadable.
Octavio Paz wrote two bodies face to face
are at times two stones and night a desert.
why am i terrified of deserts?
april 24th, the pattern/ some app convinced it
knows my life better than myself:
"a part of you wants to lose yourself in
a connection that transcends your ordinary senses,
bringing something ecstatic and intense into your life.
you may continually look for fulfillment
outside yourself, fantasizing
someone will come along and save you"
it's who the poems are about.
has it always been that way?
"you seem self-assured"
the way you said it then
echoes every time
i want to see you again.
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