I was raised beneath fireworks,

beneath a flag I didn’t question,

where names were short,

smiles were quick,

and the neighbors always waved.

We grilled in driveways,

drank cold lemonade,

learned to laugh in a way

that needed no words.

But something tugged—

quietly, firmly,

from somewhere else.

A house hung with red paper lanterns

that glow softly in the dusk.

Ancestral voices that whisper

through doorways guarded by stone lions.

A song that plays faintly from the other room,

one I knew by feeling, not by words.

Chopsticks that rest beside my bowl

smooth and certain in my hand.

“Like this,”

they said as they handled the wooden sticks,

and I listened,

not just to the words,

but to what they carried.

At night, calendars marked festivals

I only knew through taste.

Red envelopes,

sticky rice,

drums echoing down narrow streets

I’d never walked.

The language came in pieces.
A greeting I could repeat.
A story I could almost follow.
A song I only heard
when the door was almost closed.

I am made of two homes—
one that raised me,
and one that waits
each time I return
like it’s the first time.

Too foreign for one,
too faded for the other,
I fold myself
to fit what each needs.

I am not rootless.
Yet my roots
stretch in opposite directions–
pulling,
pulling,
pulling still.

And somewhere in between,

I grow.