sometimes, there is more salt in my poems

than the ocean. which is to say, 

i come from three generations rooted & unbroken.

parents who broke the hemispheres in half 

with their immigrant hands 

to reclaim the waters the destroyers of their forefathers sailed.

i come from reborn soil   atlas inverted   diasporic dreams.

i come from the song of the ocean 

roaring in my ears. how beautiful.

this language of wind & water.

this, my native tongue.

& the day is a memory we travel through,

learning to call it our own. in whatever language.

whatever tongue our mouths have shaped us for.

& if the ocean can journey itself across centuries 

to rise each morning,

then so can we. children of the dusk.

we can chart these foreign waters, this strange & wild earth,

& call this place--every place--our home.