this land is still new

and so i like to believe there’s an explanation for every exchange that steals part of me. why i traded my skin for the cut fabric of cosmos. why i gave up my phone number to a bartender who bribed me with free shirley temples. why new yorkers force beauty into any history, even immigration. when i walk down 8th avenue, i project my father’s face on every stranger. he could be anyone. as my father’s son, i could be, too. in 1847, the first few chinese students arrived in new york city, giving up homeland—exonerated in the promise of christianity. here, even minorities who touch the land are labeled settlers. yet, despite this, one of the chinese students graduated from yale. my father told me once: that even from the start, we must’ve been destined for greatness. or america. and how it must feel, bending into that pool of citylight; progressing forward through the crowd of slated faces, past fish markets and opened palms, cradling the language you call god in your hands. to not yet have new york as new york, no skyline unsolicited; no universe of a city to lose; no god to watch vanish into a steel-framed past; no father to envision in a thrashing sea of myth.