Liminal
My passport says American
but the census gives me a prefix
as if I haven’t fully earned the title,
as if all the people who squint their eyes at me
have a point.
I’m sort of Chinese too,
at least my face is until I open my mouth
and butcher my parents’ language
with a tongue that flounders, drowning
outside its comfort zone.
I guess the best way to see me
is as fabric torn
from a silk changshan
and stitched onto the great American Dream.
It’s a vague space, and a lonely one--
floating somewhere in the sea
or hovering between the stars and a
crash landing.
I’m two halves of two cultures
and they don’t add up to one.