by Mye
a girl kneels on sun-dried grass,
her knees dig into the infested soil
that nature created with such intention
to build this beautiful place,
where green grow with home for their roots, and worms unearth
their homes to hide away from the creatures that patiently await their outing.
the soil is damp underneath, but dried on top; the april weather unpredictably brutal —
the aubade begins to play as the surge of febrile sensation caresses her
yellow-tan, now yellow-pink, skin then
a rainstorm crashes at 3pm again, sending her knees deeper into the soil,
the smell of petrichor permeates the air –
she does not move, she feels everything without touching anything
other than the soil that continues to tickle her knees.
the smell of finely chopped cilantro and basil
escaped through the small openings of the grille.
nostalgically unfamiliar, but,
this is home, she tells herself, the whisper diluted with the wind,
the sound is lovely — she can barely recall the taste of all her sins,
when she knows this is home, she can escape, from all she’s ever done before.
—
it did not matter where she went, or where she wanted to go,
she knew she could always come back to this place she titled home.
even when the sun sets in the east at the west of the world,
her south-east heritage — her xanthic-tone skin and dark mahogany eyes,
will always be a gentle reminder, that no matter how lost,
this is home.
stories that can be written and stacked in a chest,
parchment from the past written with quill and ink,
the taste of food that didn’t quite match her liking, but told
these stories that she didn’t quite know how to explain.
—
this is home,
even if no one else in the world knows it exists.
this is home,
even if the stories don’t make sense.
this is where she came from,
this is the grass she stepped on, and the soil that is soaked with her history,
even if she can’t quite yet appreciate the memories.
this is the place that deserves all of her love, and all of her heart,
even if it is the land that she soon decides to depart.
her mae — mother — tells her stories, about
when she snuck into the kitchen,
her great-grandmother making
curried-fish-custard,
attracted to it’s lovely spiced-pickled-scent that mae loves —
the one she didn’t quite like.
the kitchen, with people on the floor, one sitting on a wooden rabbit
scraping the meat off a fresh coconut.
she has only seen the rabbit once, in a classroom
introduced to her as an artifact of history,
with a simplicity in its sophistication,
that she didn’t quite understand.
—
her wet, brown-black, strangely not jet-black,
hair – begins to drip softly across her pha-nung and sabai.
she only had one pair of them, lasted a decade,
now too-tight everywhere.
sunlight kissed the gold embroidery, the rain
has already stopped.
she hardly ever celebrates, these clothes, these scents —
nostalgically unfamiliar.
—
the soil dries up again, the birds begin to sing,
the grass stands tall, hydrated and unharmed.
her feet find its way to lifting her body,
as she uses the tail of her sabai to brush off the soil
that refuses to leave her knees.
—
nostalgically unfamiliar,
but,
—
this is home,
and these are the stories, that the soil tells her soul. this is home,
and these are the symbols that mark her identity.
—
and, she’ll never forget,
no matter where she goes,
—
this is home.
