Sunday S.A.D.

It's a soft kind of Sunday, 

I spend hours doing laundry, 

Keeping the light therapy lamp on. 

November is when I start dreaming. 

We must love one another or die and

Even though I keep telling you I feel like dying, 

You keep holding me, saying you won't let me go

Too long without you. It's impossible you say. 

The world is so inconsolably beautiful and painful,

So I keep calling you and crying over a war

Where a homeland is stolen like mine was. 

Peony and blossom and blood that outlive our independence.

What makes homelands so good for the taking?

What price will we pay to return?

So my mother keeps going back and home and back,

And I don't really know what she thinks home is anymore.

Today we don’t cry, but you offer to crochet

Me a sweater.

My day grew soft like overripe fruit 

From begging and holding my hands out

To nothing. I keep eating figs how my dad taught me:

Rip them open, peel the skin back, eat the flower. 

You keep slipping in the back door and telling me to eat better. 

So I do. So I do. So I do.