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

PoetryAngelaSu 

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.