My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

she cannot make seconds drop dead in their tracks

yet in her trade with time, we are never compromised

as items floating next to each grain of sand in a hourglass

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

she cannot surf between soundwaves on sandcastles of anger, hate 

while I drown in my emotions

she swims above on clouds in honey dripping from her golden hair

melting me

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

nor the suckling to housework

in which she was yelled at

for not taking the guts out before cooking the fish

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

her arms are not the powerhouse

her calves do not feed blood

the mitochondria in ten thousand ants told me,

they cannot lift her groceries

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

her tongue cannot taste the bitter sauce

left by ancestors in the village 

where a dirt hole filled the absence of a toilet

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

she cannot steal from a stolen childhood

blistering in the silhouette of the oil lamp

carved between each stroke of her pen that the black ink 

traced her future

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

to pray over the grave funneling fog

spitting under the swallow of a casket

next to her mother burning to ashes

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

is it better to kiss in married lipstick

than to unspool beauty from solitude

before walking the labyrinth fractured over infidelity?

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

when will I see her fifty years stop hanging from wrinkle wedded skin

breathe in the science of forgetting

that all memories are long washed away in unlearning

My Ah-ma is not your superwoman

She is my superhero.