Born of a country I barely remember
I did not spend a childhood
sprinting across fields of sugarcane as I maybe could,
but my legs are that sweet brown anyway, of the earth
of a land of Always-June and Never-December.
I wonder if the rainforests remember my name
or how, when I was born, they wove into my hair
that deep-dark jaguar-black I’ll always wear,
which millions of miles away, is still the same.
Maybe had I stayed a few years more
I might remember the smell of midnight rain showers
Of golden afternoons and those Caribbean flowers,

that in this house, only my mother longs for.
But instead I know only what came in suitcases
that relatives brought, of achar, casrip, curry powders,
pepper-sauce to make your stew a little louder.
Foreign things finding homes in faraway places.
This land I left behind;
is it still mine?