Prelude

Traduttore, traditore.
—Unknown

Your infidelities will have changed you.
—Olena Kalytiak Davis

I don’t deny it. I’ve taken the dagger

of my tongue and gently

run it over your ear. I’ve often

thought Umma, said Mother, thought

it wasn’t my mother whom I’d spoken about—

all this without you suspecting me,

I’d like to think. I’ve whispered Te quiero to actually mean

I want you. I had to use a Japanese word, ginko, to explain

in English my first time seeing the splitting yellow

fans of eun-haeng leaves in Korea.

There’s so much of the past in these

choices. Let me tell you

how I wished for a long, unfractured life:

I slurped noodles, threaded

needles. But again and again I dreamt

I was a series of footprints

pressed deep into the earth, covered in snow.

I told my parents about this, saying:

나는 hilo의 삶을 바랬어요

조심스럽고 잘리지 않게 자라고싶었어요. 하지만 soñé

que me había vuelto muchos 발자국들, 땅에 깊이 눌려진 발자국들,

cubiertos de nieve.

Do you trust me? Trust me,

just in the beginning. Then translate

me for yourself, question me

unsparingly like a sparrow

to another sparrow about breadcrumbs.

Source: Poetry (June 2022)