Prodigal

Photo by Mike Belleme

By Jennifer Chang

I will not know this street
freely again,

nor the certainty of these trees, 
once my primal alphabet,

now uttering tones 
I’ve lost all fluency in. 

The thought has passed
before thinking found

a wellspring. First spray 
of forsythia, phantom

budding, what explains 
the season beyond 

words. I used to say
“home” and stayed 

there. I loved 
the stunning

stasis of my boredom
and heard

lions roaring from
the back door. 

No one told me
I could survive 

rootless, this 
ceaseless wandering 

far from the creek,
far from the sparrows. 

Once I watched them
scatter together,

their self-made rage
I called music. 

Assaulting the honey-
suckle before it could

flower, the artless clatter
of their wings, a ruckus

like violence 
rising from the next room.

Every day I heard
their fighting

and in silence
I waited for their fighting

to resume. I thought like a child,
reasoned like a child,

then I put aside childish things. 
A patchwork door of rainbowed wood,

weeping that chimed into the night.
This is the home I left. 

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