Immigrant React
— Aishvarya Arora
A black mirror lake flakes gold in the light.
I listen for the breath of a far-off engine room.
How long before somewhere is your home?
My father reached America
long before he arrived. Each night he would wake
to find a toe gone numb, a finger shortened.
Some breath lifting fine hairs from the nape
of his neck, & something, almost, licking his
earlobe. The same breath lodged in his throat—
he could not eat without thinking of leaving.
What is more dangerous—a moving body
or the land it catapults into? When I left home, I let
the space behind me close rapidly,
not a wound,
but a winking eye shut—a round lump,
a clean seam.
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