What she is, she doesn’t know. Banana, my Chinese
friend said: yellow outside, white within.
Abandoned then found
⎯on sidewalks, in doorways, by an orphanage,
a bank, a hardware store, in baskets or without⎯
a child without mother, roof, or papers,
whose history must be imagined by those who found her.
She escaped the midwife’s bucket—the water prepared
should a girl pierce the light—but not the millenial
prejudice. She was lacking, she had to go. Who cried
and how much⎯another mystery. And so
now this banana
………………………..split
between the mother country (forgotten) and this one,
this girl defined as much/less/more (her choice)
by what she remembers as/than by what she doesn’t,
is (by definition) a survivor, is, in all her
sweetness and splitness, our dessert,
one tragedy redeeming another
in the unexpected deserts we (white)
……………………….(infertile) mothers
found.