Words crumbling like a generation on fire. How 
to interrogate a language: churn syntax 
from fractured assimilation, 
rename a child with another country, 
curve each syllable into straight lines 
until the mouth turns imposter. 
Always another sound without a home. 
Tongue sliding against moon-blood 
gums, rough with uncertainty. 
I scale the heritage beneath my teeth and shudder
at its emptiness. Only a diaspora 
of lunar year lanterns and Szechuan 
crystallizing with warmth — as if it was enough 
to recognize something without knowing 
its name. & I reach 
deeper, clawing the mouth’s vessel for ancestors. 
This language unspooling 
through history, bundled across
a grandfather’s back as he rowed oceans for 
a dream, traced through wet markets 
and family inheritance only to stop 
at the basin of my throat. Kneel 
like a lineage in offering, so that
the lady repeats herself 
and all I do is smile in the dialect of ghosts, 
mouth the Chinese name 
I never had.