I know they look when we walk
at your flattened eyes, lidless, pressed to a porcelain skull.
We walk to the temple, gritty gods arched —
on the sphered gray cheeks of the sky.
 
I stare at you, wondering if they will let us pray.
Me with my yellowed plasma, of banana peel and saffron dust
and you, with skin too ivory to be from Myanmar.
They sneer “tourists,” with lips contoured
like diseased roots.
 
This home my home.
The man’s hand slips under the Formica counter.
I grab my mother and her porcelain hand.
But he only bobs his head to a cultural swing —
tha thai tum tha thai. Breathe.
 
Camphor clings to our geometric figures.
We pass
in bevelled shapes
to a dialect I know in a tongue I do not have.
 
“Everything looks good on white,” said the licorice dark man.
I am standing with my father
culturally indistinct in a thready cotton kurta.
The man is slick sap and adhesive words.
 
He offers the plastic parcel to me.
I take it.
I take the parcel, damp from his black amber hands.
“Everything looks good on white.”
There is a curl to his letters
a spicy twist
softening the peeling syllables of
a slurred perspective.
 
The sari inside is flamingo pink.
A tawdry scarf, slapped with the tourist’s price.
My father haggles.
The licorice man grabs my wrists
showing the custard skin beneath.
“Everything looks good on white,” he declares.
The price is final.

Roshani Chok.