The mother who gave me my eyes is not
the mother that taught me to see.
Windows shut, night by night, I fear
to turn off the light. Though ghosts, they say,
are unseen by those that don’t have families
buried beneath their grounds. So they walk
unseen by me, thinking on my mothers
what they left for me. One left marks,
the other thoughts. One taught words,
the other tongues. One is flesh, the other
Bones. Heavy is the weight to those
that shield and shift their weight to show. But bones
they do not lie. And flesh, they say,
form according to the bones. Ruler, anchor,
measure to what incarnates and incubates.
Just like my mothers, my flesh and bones have fought
meticulous, eye for thigh and thigh for heart –
we have heard it all. We have formed
a dancehall of notions of incompatible
directions: North and South and West and East.
But if seasons and suns shape
colors and visions with the same precision
for every pair of eyes, how am I still
not able to bridge the small stooping gap
between my two lungs when my mothers cry?
Their skin wears beauty in such different tones:
My eyes and my heart
come from two different stars.
Photo: Sam Kolder (2019)
Poet Bio
Home?
A place where I can thrive.
What is home to you?
In German, home, where you return every day to, or where your address is, is called Zuhause, while Heimat describes where you’re from, your ancestral home. I used to be offended when people wanted to know where my ancestral home was, but I take it as an opportunity now to honour my ancestral line, because me being here is not an accident, and I return the question, even to Germans who are German looking I will ask: where are you from?
Lucia Deyi is a creative from Germany of Chinese descent. After studying at CalArts, she went on to pursue her MA in Shakespeare and Creativity at Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. Her writing work ranges from poetry to pieces for screen & theater. She's currently developing a graphic novel and voices characters for film & TV in Germany, Berlin.
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