I don’t know…

Mx. Jo Nguyen

I don’t know what the sky looks like in Việt Nam, I don’t know whether
we can count the stars together when we visit one day, I don’t know if
we will pass as belonging there — with our family lineage being some
where between Hà Nội and Cần Thơ; with our long, straight hair; with
our eyes so dark, they’re almost black (mocked for their slant, the slit:
we view the world so narrowly but think about so broadly); with our
accents transfusioning all dialects together (you learning your looser
tongue from my own loose tongue) — they know our blood does not have
any home there; our lost gazes let them know we can’t feel their land
despite our bare soles; our need to belong within those who never left —