Native Title

my dead grandmother’s young

             Japanese maple was uprooted     stolen

                         last week       scattered leaves crushed

under a stranger’s foot. to recover

             from this loss I spelled my name red

                         in alphabet soup—mashed the letters

together until they resembled my face,

             which is as my mother’s—skin of ginger

                         & violet tuber. on split lips I wear my papa’s

name      passed down from his father’s

             fathers—a century of men called darling,

                         cariño by Spanish priests. I am still named

after all of them, here where my brown

             face is my first language, where I carry

                         a muddled tongue. words I try to forget:

darling, cariño, native, empire, earth. in 1909

             the Supreme Court gifted my forefathers

                         their native title for being dark on their own

dirt. to (dis)prove myself native       I honey

             my mouth with prayers for untainted soil,

                         because I was schooled across the ocean

in a convent—nuns cracking on my knuckles

             with splintered rulers & taking five centavos,

                         my rusted allowance, for every word not

spoken in English. a trickery      this germination

             of my nonexistent accent. & I place blushed

                         begonias newly-potted on my windowsill—

sad replica of my childhood garden. still, I wept

             when my grandmother’s tree returned—

                         replanted messy by surreptitious hands.

I tally my fortunes     count new freckles

             blossoming every year—stare at the mirror

                         until I am my mother’s mothers, even if

             I can never tell which empire I mimic

as I am shuffled from one to the other.