they’re everywhere,
in the cupboards of the kitchen and
underneath the dining table,
in our voices when we speak.

the exchanges between my mother and i are always
lasers, ****** care, whatnot, money —
leaving our words on the stairs
like bricks in hopes the other might trip over them
& asserting ourselves like a flash of lighting first
before the thunder.

i drive a hard bargain with my mother
I wish I didn’t know about
because she tells me as a daughter I
must not get involved with the boys of this world
I am easily more expensive
to nourish, to dress, to please —

that it is all because
”we are silent but angry women in my household”;
and this is true, i know
my sister likes to leave a disaster using her door
when she slams it shut to let everyone know yes,
she’ll do the dishes but maybe not tonight.

my mother likes to poke fun like needles —
her teasing turned daggers when she half complains,
half laughs at the sorry state of our stormy household
until I breakout into pimples. then she bursts into a gust,
disappearing until she can prowl again.

and then my father, who does not speak to me but
so passionate with the wilderness of his youth
left behind under the monsoons back home, his feet stomp
on carpeted stairs when he is full of my mother’s words,
ready to charge like a water buffalo in the rice fields spooked by a snake
and I can’t help but wonder how our home is still drifting,
barely intact on this boundless sea
and i can no longer see the horizon ahead of us

because i, on the other hand so full yet so empty about myself
all the time, keep to myself like a stray cloud -
so I carry his fire, first candle of his flame, like all the ones before me.
see that my heart is laden with a churning thunder, though I have no right to be;
perhaps it is the love offered in our unloving words
that are exchanged like gifts at our family gatherings, building

quiet storms.
they are everything that i am
that i will do,
that i will become.