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There are poets with history and poets without history, Tsvetsaeva claimed living 

through the ruin of Russia.  

 

Karina says disavow every time I see her. We, the daughters between countries, 

wear our mean mothers like scarves around our necks.

 

Every visit, mine recounts all the wrongs done against her

 

ring sent for polishing returned with a lesser diamond, Years of never rest and,

she looks at me, of nothing to be proud of.

 

I am covered in welts and empty pockets so large sobs escape me in the backroom of 

my Landlord's fabric shop. He moves to wipe my tears

 

as if I’m his daughter 

or I’m no one’s daughter.

 

It’s true, I let him take my hand, I am a girl who needs something. I slow cook bone

grief, use a weak voice.

 

My mother calls me the girl with holes in her hands, every time I lose something.

 

All Russian daughters were snowflakes once, and in their hair a ribbon long

as their body knotted and knotted and knotted into a large translucent bow.

 

It happens, teachers said, that a child between countries will refuse to speak. 

A girl with a hole in her throat, every day I opened the translation book.

 

Silent, I took my shoes off when I came home, I 

put my house clothes on.

 

We had no songs, few rituals. On Yom Kippur, we lit a candle for the dead

and no one knew a prayer.

 

We kept the candle lit, that’s all.

The wave always returns, and always returns a different wave.

I was small. I built a self outside my self because a child needs shelter.

 

Not even you knew I was strange,

I ate the food my family ate, I answered to my name.