This Is What It Feels Like

a stranger in familiar land      my blood too sings from the cracks of these cobbled streets   i felt it within the delicate configurations : carvings and photographs, ceramic figurines dipped in resin my Mama’d collected,       passing down like water in a slow stream      tipped in gravity                      like me       i heard a song      and i let it carry me, felt a pull outside the scenes of my fatherland      a daughter meant to leave said my impassive stars, if actions were to mean anything       but nothing’s too far away these days i tell my sister and my friends sipping beer as good as Texas on a Tuesday in the west end, dripping with irony and what feels like satisfaction