My mother mourns leaving her own country so deeply it runs through her veins into mine. Bangladesh is what she knows and what she loves. She spends her time showing me her culture: spinning through dances, running through poetry, and wading through history.

Egg-yolks blooming in serenity
baba’s palms turn upwards
black dirt falling on the sun.
The fruit of baba’s hands
covered in spines
twisted but not the wicked way
that punctures skin.
Serpentine limbs extend in search of
hands to hold

I envy the stories
They tell.
Of the East
And the West.

Of bare feet,
Guava trees,
Roasted fava beans.

Of tin water pails
That held curly-haired children
To keep the dust off their feet.

I will never call a Latino “papi”
sino héroe, soldado, sobreviviente
Brother in bondage, sibling in survival
The chains of the Hispanic clink with those of his Black cellmate
We languish under the same white gall
Asian men rattle wire fences in

Giggling, Aditi grabs my hand and twirls me along as her ghagra’s elaborate mirror embroidery catches in colorful lighting.

But you need it, you said. I thought you wanted to be beautiful. I slammed my hands on the wheel of your Land Rover and pulled over to the side of the road near the big houses with green lawns and trampolines, Norfolk Way.

A ransacked village in India is where my lineage began
Women.
Women, I will
And
Can never, ever know.
Tribulations my western brain
Cannot comprehend.
They made me.
I have the blood of
Hundreds

I am from
the expressions of my people
flattened nose and slits for eyes
leathery skin and cricks in my back
each feature of mine
a reflection of my family heritage

From the moment a screaming woman thrusts us into the world,
Soft, bloody heads first.
We begin to deteriorate.
For some, that occurs at a faster pace than others.

A class clown attempted murder today.
A mother’s little boy,
a child’s best friend,
a teacher’s beloved terror,
stood over the monster who raised his freckly faced son
like the animal he’d become,
clutching a knife.

I am the quiet little Hispanic girl,
Light skinned
people make fun of me
they say I am not the color I’m supposed to be.
But who cares? It’s me not you!

As a grade school student I would read comic books. I was no expert in the field nor any sort of serious collector but never the less I enjoyed reading them. I liked all sorts of heroes, Marvel or D.C., but my favorite was The Shadow. I liked almost every comic book hero.

The ties to your ancestry
Binding a great family tree,
With this can you be truly free?
Now you have these choices three:
Embrace your blood,
An old-new bud.
Refuse the bonds
For fields beyond.
Keep roots down there,
And to be fair,