Embroidered with Blood


My story cloth is embroidered with blood.
It bleeds along the Mekong,
where you can’t distinguish
the gun smoke from the clouds
or my mother’s tears from the rain.
It bleeds with invisible
footsteps through the jungles.
It bleeds onto the rice fields
and blossoms with the opium flowers.
It bleeds deep.

Blood stains my father’s hands
as he cuts the umbilical cord.
It covers my mother’s body
as she washes her newborn.
It bleeds from my placenta
as it is buried with honor
under the central column of the shack.
Born in a refugee camp,
my existence from day 1
has always been a political one.
It bleeds deep.

Blood stains the streets I walk on.
It bleeds in masses of black, brown,
and blue killings
at the intersection with homes
of violence, abuse, and overdose.
Bruised and bleeding,
repeating cycles of love
that seems to be worthwhile
suffering in pain of denial.
It bleeds deep.

Bloodstains splatter from my pen onto the paper.
Slurs of English as my second language
as I am taught about the hatred
for my language, culture, and heritage.
I leach and suck the blood from this country
and they teach me
to pull myself up from my own bootstrap,
but I have sandals on.
It bleeds deep.

My blood continues to stain
with every gentle footprint I leave,
every university campus I step on,
every student I teach,
every community I uplift,
every question I ask,
every word I speak,
every action I engage.
It bleeds deep.

We believe that after death
a soul will return to its birthplace,
retrieve its placenta jacket,
put it on, and
begin its voyage to the sky.
But I am a lost soul.
Lost among the barbed wires
and telephone lines,
still searching for my mother’s tears
somewhere along the Mekong
where the sun rises
on her gentle perm
and the sun sets
with a smile on the horizon
to be reborn another day.
My story cloth is embroidered with blood.
It bleeds deep.

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