A Guest at my Own Origin

1.

frost-bitten and endless,

the train carves through winter fields,

carrying me back to 宣化,

a small town near Beijing,

a necessary translation.

the town greets me with dust

on my tongue. street vendors

tending their fires, starch-sausages

sizzling in gutter oil, synthetic

sweetness braiding through the air.

which self am I bringing back?

the one who’s never left, or the one

who only remembers leaving?

at the table, uncles I barely remember,

pour baijiu into chipped teacups,

toasting to health, to fortune,

to return, always to return,

and urge the sixteen-year-old me

to finish the biting translucence

in the teacup. sing, play something

for us, they called me to the center.

my parent’s permitting smile is

a door closing. I am all my ages

at once: five, eleven, thirteen, sixteen,

always the youngest,

always the promise, the coin dropped

in the well of all expectations.

grandfather asks why I've been gone

for so long, his hands gnarled

like old ginger, moving with

the muscle memory of harvests.

I search for words

in a dialect that once

lived in my mouth like a stone

worn smooth by a river,

now jagged, foreign, catching

on my city-sharpened tongue.

how do I explain a song

sung in a different key

across the Pacific?

words I no longer own.

a guest at my own origin.

2.

the village has grown smaller.

or perhaps I've grown too large

for its narrow lanes, where

grandmothers still hang laundry

between bare branches, where

the well stands like a monument

to thirst. in the kitchen, the dumplings

pinch themselves shut, making

small fists of dough of pork and

scallion. you're a northerner,

they would tell me, northerner

eat dumplings, but I’d only drink

the dumpling water, the smell of

a thousand winter nights, for I have

always hated dumpling’s greasy

sharpness, flesh and onion

conspiring under their skin. now

I sleep in my father's childhood bed,

the ceiling low enough to touch.

through the paper window, I see

the fields stretch into memory,

one I used know by heart,

where I’d through every New Year’s

eve with sparklers fizzing in

my frozen hands, those brief stars

showering the dark. perhaps I've

outgrown the shape I left behind,

this small village shrinking around me,

becoming even smaller,

my body too foreign a thing

to slip back into its old skin.