The Flaws of My Perfection

My American cousins

see my mixed pedigree

of birthplace and locations lived.

Oblivious to their myopia,

a country of immigrants over the water.

My reflection will never match theirs.

Me—blemished.

My stains of expatriation

scar me as foreign to them.

Here is my life:

A fire of blazing hues and

they only notice smoke in their eyes.

My experiences of customs

Handed down 

Interactions of a millennium. 

They flinch at the alien-ness

of ancient sites.

They wrinkle noses 

at imagined whiffs of moldy dust.

My life abroad 

borders on a map. 

A fine crackled glaze

of Thai celadon.

For them my absences 

are fractures in porcelain;

to me they are filled and mended in molten gold.

A valued dish

mended by kintsugi.

My existence isn’t grounded

like theirs—safe, homogenized, and bland.

Mine is of three dimensions to their two.

Life is a tightly budded flower,

thorny and gnarled on a bush, 

wind battered and opened to bloom.

Not their store bought plastic flower. 

I am not perfect;

so hard to understand. 

But my life is complete

in its fractured, flawed, and faraway perfection.

Edited by Eisha Gupta.