Inspiration and lessons from youth

Last night I dreamed about hiding
on his black marbled plate
Inside of what remained of their meal,
Cowering in hallowed potato skins.
forced to sit still and listen
To China leaving continents to oceans table
With Immigrant Plates, welcomed
Until they ran out of things to give.
I had nothing to offer this country.
Fear followed this epiphany-
Fear threw a laughing child up my larynx
As his daughter ask for honey tea.
With a voice that lacked sweetness.
She needed it.
I hear him move, towards to stove
Where the kettle stabbed at the air like a car
that abruptly stops, or turns, or starts
I thought to myself:
‘A sound so sinister is reserved
for all that ends, begins, or changes dirrection.
This is a sound of anguish.
And now there he goes
Pouring the fury into a glass mug,’
I heard him quickly drown a chamomile tea bag
‘The teabag and I are kin
We are both steeping in the warm darkness
Or is the cold darkness steeping in us?’
Then I listened as he
handed the mug to his child.
She gripped it with both hands like a bowl.
She landed it heavily to the table,
And it spilled a bit.
Eagerly she touched her lips to the rim-
But her father's breath
smelled like a reprimand:
“Blow it my beloved child do not be hasty
When drinking fresh anguish!
Before sipping, blow your cold soul into it-
Then let it,sit to cool”
But some pains must be learned.
He looks away, while she blows a few times,
counts to ten, and then takes a large gulp.
Then she screams like a kettle,
With such an anger that I awaken
With leaking eyesoccets,
Thinking, that there must be
some celestial link
between my eyes and that mug
both still cracked, on his floor.

This poem is about: 
My community

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