Nose pressed up against the window, I wait for pitter-patters to turn to pelting poundings as hundreds of flying ants rise upward, dizzying my eyes and swarming my head.
So predictable: Tanzanian rainy seasons.
“Dad! Come on!” and he brings them as always: bright yellow boots and clashing pink raincoat with words on them I can’t yet read, words that Mom says I’ll learn in school next year.
Tupperware in hand, I rush out, dancing to a chorus of wings: a flapping frenzy. Within minutes, I have plenty of the squirming creatures, my prized possessions, enough to make Mom proud.
Back at home, the three of us busy ourselves. Dad hangs up my dripping raincoat while I tug away at endless wings while Mom heats up the stove and readies
a drizzle of oil, a handful of flying ants, a pinch of salt; sizzling in the pan, they fry quickly. Then, around the table, Mom, Dad, and I sit, munching and crunching our seasonal snack.
So predictable: Tanzanian rainy seasons.
And even though I lived through many of them, I can no longer recall whether the flying ants tasted more like bacon bits or burnt popcorn. So I wait, nose pressed up against the window.
By Melanie Han, an avid traveler and a poet who was born in Korea, grew up in East Africa, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing in Boston. She has won awards from Boston in 100 Words and Lyric, and her poetry has appeared in several magazines and online publications, such as Fathom, Ruminate, and Among Worlds. During her free time, she can be found eating different ethnic foods or visiting new countries.
“The first year I came to this country, I swallowed down everything I had ever known and it slid down my throat into the darkness of secrets, or maybe just things nobody wanted to know. Either way I was empty, ready for the sunshine and breeze of this new world to wrap me up in a whirlwind strong enough to block out the rest. I should’ve known better, but somehow I still thought it would be that easy, that I would just keep my old secrets and build a new framework of identity and slide myself into it without losing too much. The first year I came to this country, I forgot everything I had ever learned and discovered a darkness of secrets inside of me big enough to block out the rest, but I lost too much.
In the end I found the pieces I needed, I dredged up my past and did not let it be forgotten. Instead I merged the old and the new together, weaving the different threads into a tangled mess of knots behind the scenes that nobody wanted to know about. I managed the chaos as carefully as walking on a black-night path except this time there was nobody to tell me how to do it with confidence and everybody was there to see when I tripped over the stump and landed in the thorns. Still, I wrapped my cloth around me like a bright mask or a new skin and when my new friends poked holes in it they discovered the whirling dances of a different country underneath, so they named me after my mix of colours and I blurred them all into something resembling stability. In the end I always knew that every story I told had holes and half-truths, but when I put them together they stacked into the pieces I needed to keep going so I held my chin high and taught myself confidence.
Sometimes, still, strangers ask questions. They see me and notice the blurred edges of my names, they catch glimpses of the holes in my skin and they wonder if I am really who they think I am. Mostly I reach into my jar of stories and I swirl the choices around and pick a truth to give them, something to cover up the things they don’t really want to know about. But sometimes I toss my head and laugh, unfurl the bright colours into a banner that declares – I am /never/ who you think I am – because I am not even who I think I am and I’m certainly not who I say I am and who am I anyway? Sometimes I spin in a dance they’ve never seen before and I tell them this too is me, sometimes I write them a poem full of foreign languages and can’t be bothered to interpret it. Sometimes, I am too much for them and I do not care because these are the pieces I need to make sure I don’t lose too much and the confusion of one stranger is a small price to pay for the gift of being complicated and confident.
You can’t catch me, I say, whirling away in a blur of secrets and stories colourful enough to block out the rest.
This year I met a stranger who tried. A stranger who chased after my trail of contradictions and picked up every half-truth I dropped along the way, came up to me with arms full of gathered pieces and told me – look I’ve found such a beautiful mess – as if the tangled knots of my underneath could ever be called beautiful. Messy, yes. I know my stories are messy, I know when my colours are spinning around me sometimes they stain the ground rainbow and I don’t know how to clean it up. But I held up the secrets I had hidden away in the darkness and discovered a mosaic of stained mess that even this country has chosen to name as art, and I wondered why it took a stranger to see that this too could be beautiful. Either way, I guess I was ready for the things nobody wanted to know to become the things I could choose to say, and I added them into my jar of stories imbued with every shred of confidence I have taught myself. After all, who else could show me how to wrap myself up in the sunshine and breeze of a new world without losing the pieces of my history that I needed, how to laugh at the edge of the night-dark and stand up to try again over and over until the blur of my stories swirled with confident colours? There was nobody there but me and the watching world.
So I built my secrets into a mosaic, turned the tapestry of my stories upside down and inside out to show the chaos, stacked my names into the holes of my half-truths and called it brave. Beautiful. A new kind of confident, a bold dance in the middle of the street with eyes flashing and feet stomping and hands clapping rhythms they learned somewhere far away and long ago, somewhere I cannot return but will not forget.
I’m not a line, I say these days. I’m a circle, looping back into myself like a repeating eight of infinity, an endless beautiful mess.”
This is how it starts A little girl, too young to understand, Told she is leaving behind an apartment For an adventure, and she is glad. Too glad to ask questions.
This is the middle, the Whole entire story really Dust and heat and foreign languages, Friends who look different and The little girl learns so many things But it all comes down to this Nothing ever stays the same, nothing Ever lasts forever.
This is how it ends A little girl, too old to forget Is told she is leaving behind her world For a new one and she is shattered. Too shattered to protest.
I guess this is the real Ending though When the little girl walks Onto the plane and flies away Back to the world of Apartments and becomes Someone new, someone different, Someone called Me.
If This Love Is Supposed To Be Permanent (I Don’t Know How) Elizabeth Hemp
No one ever taught me how to stay And you’re getting too close If this love Is supposed to be permanent I don’t know how to do that And I must confess You’re scaring me This close is too close because What if you leave now And my world is shattered As I have always known it will one day be? Too much power, too much trust, too much Potential for hurt and no one Has ever accused me of being an optimist
I don’t know how to stay This point is farther than I’ve ever gone before And I don’t know what comes next Except leaving Leaving has always been the abrupt cut off For all of my history And I have always hated it but if I’m honest I don’t know how else to do it This is the point in the story Where the ending is supposed to go And it’s aching nervously In my bones I don’t like not knowing what comes next
So there’s no reason to leave Except every reason in the world We’re too close, I’m too scared, You can’t understand this fear in my heart Compelling me to leave you behind Before it’s too late and I am the one being left Again, like always… Besides that, no one ever taught me How to stay And all I know is goodbye
Safety is in goodbye Safety is in goodbye Safety is maybe not worth it – Do I dare to try And stay?
The purity of the air after rainfall – The sacred smell of sandalwood Wafting down from the hilltop shrines Reminds me of something. My deadweight soul, flapping with airline tags, Lies gasping, dusted with the residue of long years Lettered ‘Fragile’ and ‘This Way Up’ Entreating those that handle it to be careful: To see it safely on its way to wherever it’s going. Coat-hangers strewn on the unmade bed, The unwashed floor, the weary bags, The cluttered tabletops Which will perhaps retain traces of my having been here When I am gone: A few fingerprints maybe, Scattered fibres from my clothes Or crumbs of what I’ve eaten. Otherwise I’ll be on my way Like the breath in my lungs And the black blood rushing from my hidden heart And the voice of Winter groaning in the pipes And the hissing gas of the stove And all the unsaid words and murdered thoughts Bleeding in the sink of my mind Incognito down the street, keys clinking in my pocket With the tumbling leaves and the frantic ghost of the city To a new address. And maybe I’ll see you again, But we both know it won’t be the same. I’ll twiddle my new keys and feel my chains As though I’m my own jailer. Because I don’t recognise myself anymore.
Author Unknown(if you have any information regarding the author please contact us using the form)
I carefully study the dust The shadows The darkness The hope in the future Anything except His eyes.
He takes my hands Warms my fingers Kisses me with the gift of release Brushes my soul with a last Moment of sunshine And lets me go.
I’m sorry I say But I mean Goodbye.
Traveler’s Deja Vu
My shoes have walked these carpets before, On a different continent but It was the same. It is always the same.
Quiet sunset, orange glare reflecting Off the windows but the Chaos never ends and It is an odd contrast, calm and frantic Side by side here.
We are sprawled out, headphone cords Held in cool palms, hands that know this routine. The man next to us is tired, army green and brown. The woman across the walkway is saying goodbye, Teary eyes and too many hugs… Maybe it is her first time – she is young. I can’t remember my first time.
The little ants in neon vests outside are scurrying And inside every type of shoe imaginable walks past But it all feels familiar, deja vu from a thousand Past experiences – my passport might not agree But I am an International; airports will always Feel like home.
Read more TCK poems – this one includes a response from Elizabeth Hemp
Do not pity me And moan over how far away I am. I already know. I’m already aware. And your sympathy sounds like nothing But words.
Do not claim to understand That you know what I’m going through Because you left your child At a camp five hundred miles away For a whole summer.
Do not tell me how you cried The day you left your child At college in another state. My parents left me And flew away A thousand Five thousand Ten thousand Miles.
I thank you for your prayers. I thank you for your concern. But understand: You cannot know; You do not know; Until you have truly lived This life.
I don’t cry tears. I don’t mourn all day. I came to terms With the reality of my life Many years ago; And I am not heartless Because of that.
Don’t ask me when I will see My parents again. If I asked you that question, Would you really be able to answer? Maybe I can answer, But even if I can’t, Do not respond, “Oh, that must be so hard.”
This is my life. This is all I know. So next time you see me And ask about my family: Do not think I am heartless. Do not claim to understand. Do not pity.
There was no funeral. No flowers. No ceremony. No one had died. No weeping or wailing. Just in my heart. I can’t… But I did anyway, and nobody knew I couldn’t. I don’t want to… But nobody else said they didn’t.
So I put down my panic and picked up my luggage and got on the plane.
There was no funeral.
By Alex Graham James
A Response
“I can’t. But I did anyway, and nobody knew I couldn’t.” Isn’t that the summary of every goodbye I have lived through? How many times have I done the impossible, entered into the unimaginable simply because I must? The human spirit is resilient, determined to live, capable of withstanding much. All the same, every time I do something I can’t, I lose myself. Piece by piece I’m losing myself, trails of bloody footprints in my wake.
No words or imagery could ever be enough to capture it, and I’ve spent my whole life searching for how to explain something that is inexplicable. The sacrifice of innocence, the absolute helplessness of a child, the depth of the ache bound up inside my knowledge. Too much knowledge, too much logic, and I cut myself off from the relief of grief, thinking I hadn’t earned it. Wasn’t good enough for it. Isn’t everyone good enough for grief?
What keeps you here I ask my heart Stranger in a strange land, so white, so clean
These fields in June, she laughs Your red-stained fingers A taste of heaven beneath each leaf And this sky expansive and clear
I wonder why, my heart, you hold Steady on small delights after Months of sifting memories Under grey skies Testing each day as we Walk out into this not-all-bad But still foreign place
I am young, says she – A child who races, explores, Finds beauty even here And welcomes the new, trusting Inviting sweet existence even Within this space of not belonging
I hold out for Simple Wonders; Encounters with the Presence
Crouched amongst the rows I ponder this Sifting through the too-soon and the already-past I find it. The ripest, the reddest berry Welcomes me into the perfect balance Proves to me that Yes, child, even here, even you, Have abundant peace. The taste and texture of now.
By Bree Becker, a third culture kid from Rwanda and Kenya who now lives in Oregon, USA.
