My creators 

sank their feet into this swampland 

and rid themselves of  

ancient ancestral ties.  

The Rangoli and Bengali 

are cast off 

with anguish and English.  

Trading in roots 

for growing seeds.  

This is what their life becomes— 

watering plants that one day 

will shade them.  

My creators tend to me 

in the ways they know how 

the ways their mother tended to them; 

but how can you use old tricks 

on a new land? 

This is not the lush gardenia gardens 

this is the swamplands. 

This is the place where poison and water 

are the same color.  

They do not know this; 

yet. 

My creators’ hands grow tired.  

They become old together.  

The once rich and holden hues on their skin 

fades into a mulled yellow. 

Melasma is grown across their hands, arms, and face— 

too much time spent in the sun— 

too much time gardening their seeds. 

They never did take care of themselves,  

any extra always went to the seeds. 

Their seeds grew well.  

Healthy and handsome children; 

who look like their creators 

but are not their creators. 

They do not know 

the way fresh Rangoli paint looks 

when the evening sun beams on it.  

Or when the breeze is just right 

you can smell the gardenia garden inside the ghar. 

But those things don’t matter here. 

These children know the foreign tongue.  

They know how to use the glowing screens.  

They know how to use the useful.  

They know of their origins but not of the ancestral ties.  

It is years 

until the children are torn out of their 

sheltered, well-watered pots.  

They realize they are the children 

of immigrants. 

Immigrants who are on other’s soil. 

The children realize the soil they were grown in 

was never truly theirs at all.  

They try to understand their creators.  

They try to understand the language.  

The way the O’s are sweet and rounded. 

The way spices are blended and balanced.  

The way their creators are weary of  

paper skinned people’s motives.  

But they do not understand,  

what the chaos is 

over boys who are friends,  

over ink and holes in the skin. 

Neither here nor there 

these children learn to open and close  

parts of themselves. 

Learning to be their creators,  

learning to be the soil they were grown in 

            –   Of immigrant parents, of immigrant children