Colonial
by Melissa Ho
Mom, look at me— I tell you
some girls are born backwards:
heads folded in like take-out boxes, beds
littered with cathedrals. I name you
after the scene on the hospital television:
a blonde mouth burying a whole country
with new language. After this,
I do not speak for weeks. In the garden, the insects
swallow our winter melon, flood the earth
with blackened sugar. An unspoken ritual:
we eat until our stomachs swell. After you, white
hands dip into me like American moonlight
four more times:
a complete family. Like all good mothers,
I offer you names that fit inside the
umbrellas of their mouths burn myself out of you
and scatter this old country around
like ashes. I answer every telephone with I’m not home
then drown rice in dollar-store
olive oil every meal unfurling with grace
say thank you for your round green eyes and
new skin every angle cut with a rainless storm
of both my body and the other
a gift I worked for dreamed of
at night when I would pray for a clean body
so hungry so still that I opened myself
to the smallness of children instead
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