I am made from wood
flown in from someone’s homeland
Someone’s family once stood where I was born
heavy feet packing down the earth like asphalt
Children crushed beetles
for the sound it makes
smiling with eyes closed
Mothers shook their heads
with a dense sadness most people call blood

Fathers dug and clawed my roots
to stick wooden posts into my flesh
packed wet dirt in the wound like a tourniquet
and hung signs written on the sides of arrows

I bled until the ground became my body
slept until my body became a cavern underground
My skin turned to salt

quartz that shimmered
when stray light made it in

Above me I could still hear digging
families trying to be familiar
and when the rubble came
crumbled over the holes
and made fertilizer of bones,
I laughed an earthquake
the ground now made of grounds.

I am grown now
I own arms and legs
I have makeshift hands carved from home
87 books on a shelf, folded clothing in trash bags.

But I am not any of these things
I am not the forgotten
I am not quartz,
I am not signs written on the shapes of arrows

I am the wood
flown in from someone’s homeland
Hidden in someone’s home