"Passport," from Bloodroot.
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PassportI am your distant
relation from a one-time mother country. About me you know only my names, familiar and unpronounceable. You have not shared the railway carriages I've sat in, their seats' itchy plaid nap thinned by other travelers' thighs, or paced with me while waiting at departure gates. You cannot see the white scar on my wrist, the chilblains on my toes, or smell the coal-fire odor clinging to my clothes. A tall, stiff woman. The one with earplugs in her bag, light glinting off her glasses, a gaze that's guarded. The kind who wants to have her cake and, yes, eat it too. That sort. I translate the transatlantic. My back is hunched from all the baggage I have carried, checked and unchecked-- for which I've paid high fees, my paraspinals taut as piano wire. My worldly goods were shipped from England to America in wooden tea chests, foil-lined, a half lifetime since. My shoes were full of tea dust. Books too, for years. Believe me when I say I never meant to stay. I pray to the god of second chances, doors, chameleons, coyotes, migrants and divided loyalties. I'm hefted to the hills, the borderlands. I'll be your go-between. If anyone goes looking for me, tell them I've gone to earth. Tell them this time I'm traveling light. |