Kelly Oh

Before I was born,

She planted something sweet

In soil I have never touched,

In a season I have never felt,

And called it mine.

I have grown up in the waiting,

In the slow gold of it,

Learning that love

Does not always arrive

The way you expect.

Sometimes it takes roots quietly,

In another country,

And grows toward you 

across years

You didn’t know 

were also growing.

She says my name like a kept thing,

Like something held

Between both palms

Against the cold.

Halfway around the world

And I feel it land

In the center of me,

Warm and exact,

A homing signal

I was born already tuned to.

Between two shores

I have learned

That belonging is not a shore at all

But the water

The moving, living in between

That touches

Everything

At once.

One day I will go back.

She will place something in my hands

She has been keeping

Since before I knew I needed it.

And I will finally taste

What patience

And love

And seventeen years

Can make of a thing

When they refuse

To give up on it.