American Tongue
Mother, I call you this though I never learned the Korean word for hunger.
The persimmon sits on my counter, orange as the sunrise you might have seen the morning you let me go.
With a bit of time— the goldenrod dies into something beautiful. Its seeds scatter like the questions I swallow each morning with my coffee.
Do you know I draw spirals when I'm thinking of you?
My hand moves in circles, consciousness enacting what blood remembers: the shape of your womb, the curve of your grief.
Today I ate a persimmon and tasted a country I've never seen. Sweet flesh dissolving on my American tongue.
With a bit of time, even orphans learn to mother themselves.
The flowers know this— how dying is just another word for becoming.
