Custody, first a checkerboard of red and white squares trapped between thick black bars. Days of the week, prisons, and I was wrongly convicted. My fingers reach for help through my metal cage, yet only receive paper cuts on the corners of divorce letters. Letters drowned in blood bleed off the page and stain my Saturdays and Sundays. Custody, now neatly separated into red and white columns, walls dividing weeks and weekends. National borders barricade one house from the other. Two countries clash in a war waged with two atomic blasts burning my culture into ash white as paper. Custody, the absence of red and the erasure of my father from the calendar taped to my motherβs refrigerator, and Iβm frozen in place. Custody, a vast snow-white plane: One step forward, nothing in my future. One step backward, blizzards in my past. Custody, ground made of paper so thin, with every step, life crumples under my feet.