CROSSROADS BABY

Sonali Konda

there’s no peace, no peace for these pieces of me, these shards of gem-bright rain-gray glass.

welcome to the crossroads, baby. welcome to the home of the fragile the frantic the fragments. come, meet my roommates, the never enough the always something to prove the caught between worlds and tell me —how can you tell me— we belong.

but i have no energy so instead i wish. i wish instead of glass my bones were dandelions so i could float on this summer wind away to a place with sunshine.

i am not a dandelion light and drifting on wanderlust. i am a glass mosaic breaking and turning jagged edges inwards. i am a crossroads baby.

a foot in two worlds doesn’t mean we are amphibious slipping between water and land and surviving in both. a foot in two worlds means existence is a balancing act. now i have fallen.

look at me where i lie shattered at your feet with bones of glass scattered at your feet. i could put me together, build a mosaicstainedglasspicture of what i should be, what i think they think i should be, what i think you think i should be.

NARROW ESCAPE | DIYA HEDGE | ACRYLIC PAINT & COLORED PENCIL

I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for my mom, For my grandparents, For my obligation as a filial granddaughter. Would you like to join the call? The press of a button. A blurry, wavery screen appears. Wéi ?

My mind halts— races to a million places at the same time. Faces of my grandparents waver across the screen, like the turbulent surface of a pond, putting me into a trance, a deep sleep. Will I ever wake up?

Ni hao Bao Bao Bèi Bèi ! I snap back to reality, try to organize my thoughts. But I can’t.

Characters and phrases, so many of them, Swim around my mind until I feel almost sick. For the rest of the call, I plow, through a deep pool of stagnant water.

The words lie—

Down Down Down at the bottom of a deep well, but I cannot seem drag them up. My speech fails me.

The only thing preventing me from drowning in this Great “Language Barrier” Reef is every breath I draw in, every word I draw out, every small thing closing the gap between me and my grandparents, one stroke at a time.

Shrine

Elle Chavis