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the durian seller looked me up & down 你是混血嗎？ until then i understood her every word but this was a new term to me 混血 mixed blood i didn't even know the tension in my shoulders until it fizzled away just then her eager smile crinkled up the corners of her eyes acceptance, also foreign to me but why is your Chinese so good? I couldn't even tell & the limits of my vocabulary doesn't allow me to muddle my way through a proper answer so i smile ever unsure, ever waiting for someone to take my hand, saying, "what have you been doing there all this time? you've belonged here, beside me all along" but what is being American if not being confused? i am mixed, which is to belong to no place except inside of myself, inside of my family, soulmates, partners, outside stereotype & simplification, inside the upward sweep of this durian seller's lips; yet, i want to tell her, durian is of my father's homeland and i have my mother's eyebrows i am grasping for things you will understand in me but she mistakes my silence for certainty you look so beautiful, she says. take a discount off these fruits  frozen lychee & rice wine w/ sour dried plums. shenzhen, china.
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it pained to go, though i didn't cry; i'll save my tears for happy times  fools on a ferry. hangzhou, china. stalked old people today, toeing the damp, well-packed soil just as the 6am sun nosed the horizon less predator more iPhone photog wannabe tai ji chuan master as i creep along as inconspicuously as my turquoise pants & fewer than 40 years of age allow, hoping that the migrant senior citizens would lead me to the rest of their qi-tonifying flock i think how this is not what people meant when they called me an old soul the path splits and so does the pack of elderly i panic this was not part of the plan i had planned before coming here only in China is the local park also the Temple-of-fucking-Heaven —but not Fucking Heaven, that's crass i glance around, hoping the seniors hadn't read my thoughts apologizing mentally in case they had a wrinkled lady says tai ji is anywhere you look & then spits i think i either heard wrong or need new eyes i'm in the middle of getting myself lost on my way out when i find them the elusive morning tai ji elders raising their arms in unison, as if in welcome i join them, quiet but am soon chased away it's okay i came for what the day gave me and left smiling from the inside out  people practicing taijichuan at the temple of heaven and then the policeman said, "你不是中國人?" more statement than question realization breaking like harsh dawn across his face no wonder she nods but her eyes still panic i stood there, rubber doll dying phone in hand scrambled brain barely contained by skull signal nowhere to be found in the pause before he asked me where i was from i realized that the fear of getting found out never goes away no matter where you run away to or what part of yourself you're hiding here, my accent is good enough to fool for awhile but fails to fill the gaps in the Advanced Placement Chinese curriculum so i fall between the cracks of my limits, pushed by my own lies and how much i want to believe them  at the forbidden city, wondering if this wasn't the same wall i saw like, fifteen minutes ago what makes a wall great is its sense of humor, playfully bending the wall's spine like a ribbon across the crests of the mountainside; is its bedroom eyes, coaxing color and sweat to the surface of the humans that dare to climb with its heat; is its solid upbringing, history of toil and struggle gluing each stone tightly to its neighbor, promising to never let go; is its honesty to a fault, crumbling the sun-baked stone into dust, in memory of the people who died for its immortality; is its talent for matchmaking, plucking eligible travelers, students, retirees heartbreakers, heartbrokers, & their victims, addicts, bookworms, and academics who burn easily from every nook and wrinkle of the world and sending them blindly to discover love in one another. today, i stood at the top of a great wall in an oddly-assembled, international, sweaty bunch among strangers now dear to me   taken by amanda mayumi  taken by gordana smith they say New Yorkers are rude i say we all have places to go and you're probably just in the way. yet, i'm a tourist in a country where people actually look like me they scold me in Chinese when i take the wrong bullet train seat and i have an American retort ready but can't properly wrap my tongue around the meaning so i give up and tug my baggage away unable to fight in one language, unable to communicate in another roll your eyes at me jostle my bag none too gently when i stray too near here, i'm just another inconvenience who just doesn't get it wedging my body between closing subway doors  thank you for lighting fires in all the corners of my room the shadows are always taller than me but you make me feel more solid than they could ever be thank you for sitting at the edge of my bed. maybe the fires will burn the house down as i sleep, but with you to beat them back with your breathless laugh, smiling eyes, and crooked teeth how could i dream of anything else than waking up to you . among my friends?  ate bees for dinner; broke out in hives. this is why i don't try new things.  i suffer from terminal clumsiness with a touch of delusion and occasional sore throat dr. says it's because of a leak in my brain and i'm inclined to believe whatever she says at this point i'm busting at the seams with apologies so maybe my creator stuffed me wrong since my insides are showing and leaving a mess wherever i go give me a cup & i'll make a puddle give me a second & i'll forget give me a ticket & i'll fly out the next day without a goodbye give me a phone call & i'll miss it while writing a poem about missing home give me a kiss & i'll lean away without meaning to it's not your breath, promise give me a chance & i'll lose it through a hole in my back pocket the same place i keep my excuses and confidence give me a pen & i'll gouge my eyes out trying to write something pretty, something worth redeeming about my soul  i want to be a doctor because of the ripped out pages because of the stories that won't get told the characters that will never grow up, never get revenge, never forgive their fathers because of cliffhangers and the lives that dangle off of them because sometimes The End is more reassuring than not knowing if there will be another chapter how tragic it is to only see ends to never know how your own story begins  |
Katpoet lost in the streets of shanghai 
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