All That Reaches Back

My roots are my grandmother's kitchen,

the smell of bread rising at dawn,

her hands kneading patience into flour,

teaching me that some things cannot be rushed.

They are the stories told in uncertain terms

languages I understand but cannot speak,

photographs of people I never met

whose cheekbones I carry in my face.

My roots are stubbornness and survival,

the sway of what was left behind

so I could stand here, unafraid

to take up space, to grow upward.

But branches are queries

I learned to ask, doors I learned to open.

They are the books that taught me

the world is wider than one kitchen,

one language, one way of being right.

My branches stretch toward strangers

who became chosen family,

toward cities my grandmother never imagined,

toward work that could not have fed her,

yet feeds the part of me she planted

the need to make, to give, to matter.

Still, when the wind picks up

and I roam too far from center,

it's the roots that hold.

They say, remember where you come from.

And the branches say back, remember where you're going.

Both are true.

Both are home.