Rice Field
[poetry]
Reverberations:
Waves flooding a hollow trunk
floating in a rice field. 1
The husk splits,
roots finally spreading
into soil I’ve been taught to reject,
for it was, after all, beneath me.
How hard it is
to support yourself
with both feet off the ground.
I am bamboo now-
hungry for growth,
nourished by the music
of both earths
that claimed I didn’t belong.
Eyes open
to the melody I’d always been:
not broken, not foreign—
the indigenous harmony
of in-between.
Author’s note: This poem alludes to the shame I felt of being an outsider, Chinese, growing up in a predominantly white community, and my recent coming to terms with and becoming proud of being Chinese.
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A reference to Jay Chou’s 稻香 that I had been listening to ↩︎
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