Tonight I considered everything that I lacked
in the world of indianosity.
Now that I am here,
I am miles away from the land
where I frst had hope.
I wrapped it between layers of frail words
written on cheap paper,
covered in swatches of silk
and hidden underneath my bed.
That hope over time was knocked from my head
into the dirt, onto the snow.
Back then I was steeped and brewed
in the world of indianosity.
It was everything I did, everything I knew.
Sometimes it was a history of shame
that made me wonder why we treat ourselves
the way we do.
Now I know why...
and nothing has changed
except for the slipping away
of the elders.
I noticed the huge shift
after the death of my cousin.
We are all moving into new age brackets.
As the elders fade away
new ones take their place,
only they're not the pine trees
I knew, withered and wise,
and kids are having babies
that they cannot fll
with substance, only substances.
There are no paper footsteps
marked L and R
that I can place around life
to lead me perfectly
across modern thoroughfares
where destiny waits
or onto dusty plazas where I have danced,
where my parents
and their parents
and their parents
and their parents
have danced.
My home was my world.
I have come to realize
I am a traveler at heart.
I endure the bloodletting
of homesickness
and navigate the night
in order to right myself
like an overturned canoe.
I left home knowing
I needed a new vocabulary
to search for something
I could not defne.
If I'd had the words
I never would have left.
I had to fnd what the words
grace
failure
Hawai'i
smitten
Tomoko
fortitude
loneliness
cyanotype
and success
meant to me.
Even if the bruises and cuts
from time to time
show their purplish swagger
and crimson undertow
and make me question
my own indianosity,
I will watch the world fade
again and again,
knowing I am a particle
of beautiful brown dust.