Poetry
Fell, Stayed
For the love that endures beyond the moment it begins.
I fell for you
in a moment—
quick as light
touching water
But I stayed
for the quiet way
you held my storms
Love wasn’t the fall—
it was the staying.
6:27
On motherhood and the invisible rhythm of care
The alarm rings at 6:27,
earlier than necessary but softer than demand.
Lying still, the day already moves
inside of her—lunches, folders, meetings to remember—
she yields to a rhythm she programmed.
Cold floor, breakfast messes all parts of morning disarray.
A soft voice asks, “Is it a school day today?”
She smiles with a nod as she packs
what’s left to eat on her way.
Clearing the tiny obligations,
no one notices until not done.
She readies for more noise,
a cycle that unendingly runs.
Work hums low, then hums again,
a tired weight that fills her bones.
She had to pick up groceries,
A task that gets lost in the hours between dusk and dawn.
Driving out, her mind races:
what’s for dinner, what’s been left out.
Little voices at pickup share their love
and stories spill in joyful embraces.
Dinner and bath, a story unfinished.
The house grows still.
Little hearts settled, tucked in tight,
she is ready to turn off the lights.
An earned quiet, yet freckled with tomorrow’s take,
and dishes—always more dishes!
She lies down finally, knowing tomorrow will come the same – at 6:27,
a steady call- to give, to carry, to care and to wake.
Magnolia
Written in the stillness of postpartum days, in quiet gratitude for the magnolia outside my house.
There is a magnolia outside my house.
It blossoms once a year,
and everyone notices how beautiful it looks.
Pink flowers cover the sky and the ground.
The rest of the days, it passes in silence.
Its leaves give shade.
Winds and storms pass it by.
Winter comes, and
naked, it braces the cold.
It keeps growing.
It keeps rooting.
It keeps standing.
Life is resilient.
Arms That Remember
Written during COVID-19, it links shared distance to immigrant longing.
Nothing is the same—
the air has shifted shape.
Streets I belong to now
are memories I cannot hold.
I walk to familiar places
as if learning a new language.
Each step feels translated,
each moment just out of reach.
There’s a quiet grief—
I misplaced a life I knew by heart.
What I knew is scattered now;
I must gather and name it again.
In hands that cannot hold
my mother’s, in lips that curve
around jokes I don’t recognize,
I remember how we gathered
for no reason at all—
nights that refused to end,
hearts that knew how to mend.
Now connection flows through a screen:
a face behind glass, flat, untouched,
a voice that cannot cross the distance.
I have a home. I make a living.
I have anchored. This is enough,
I tell myself—and in ways, it is.
For many, this is temporary:
distance, ache, longing.
But the truth hums underneath for me-
this loving without holding,
this missing in quiet ways,
is muscle memory.
It is the shape distance takes
for an immigrant,
with arms that remember
what they cannot reach.