I am a son of / salt / & memory / my ears are waterlogged / with the weight of / oceans / my body / a split nation / not sovereign / not my own / i swear / half of me is always missing / in another hemisphere / yesterday, a girl asked me / where i was from / and instead of saying / China / or America / or both / blood poured from my throat / copper-thick & raw / tasting like the rusted tang of war / of revolution / of immigrant dreams melting under a foreign sun / & the girl stared at me / gaping / blue eyes unblinking / blue like the ocean of my birth / & her silence / was loud enough to break walls / or crack teeth / my teeth / are missing / misplaced / displaced / & how could i tell her / i cannot speak / have not spoken in seventeen years / i wear a forked tongue / of conjoined twins / but my English half swallowed my Mandarin half / until my English became whole / a whole beast / a hole left in my heart / a bullet hole / so now i'm bleeding / so now this is an elegy / so now this is an apology / for pulling the trigger / & what if i told you / the blood pouring from my mouth / was from the corpse of my mother / tongue / & what if i told you / every time I speak English / I can only hear / the screams / of my Mandarin self / & what if i told you / i could not tell that girl / where i was from / because home for me is a ghost / not meaning it died / but that it never existed