2:00 pm

immigrant mother has always run her feet raw trying to find the finish line.

she comes out of the womb crawling, bones like crumbling talc but already

aching with the promise of elsewhere, sunlight dappling on a face purple

with the effort it takes to breathe easy in this world.

she lives on empty pockets and swallows down the tarnished copper of her coins,

pays back her breaths by collecting minutes each night and stuffing them

in the folds of her threadbare pillowcase.

so imagine immigrant mother’s disappointment to find a child

born of the sweat that traces the curve of her cheek and yet--

she comes out maple-syrup-sticky, congealed, a mass of limbs curled too tight to move--

     what can she do but cry?

6:00 pm

syrup child hums offbeat to the whirring of the car engine and snaps

her fingers like a rusting metronome. she learns to fester

in the niduses between each tick of the second hand while immigrant mother taps

a rhythm along the car horn and click-click-clicks her tongue until traffic clears.

if she wanted, she could count the seconds until the light turned green,

peek at the neon-lit car clock warping beneath half-closed eyelids--

but she stitches her eyes together: stop

lights do not deserve to be watched in warp speed. she threads eyelashes

through the eyes of the pins and needles immigrant mother hangs

on. the crickets are singing a sh*tty drunkard’s tune

by the edge of the road, and syrup child learns to sink

into the way they stop and stutter, rinse and repeat their words, hang them out

to dry in the next verse. when her eyes begin to ache, she squeezes them tighter and swears

she owes none of her time to a world

     that is always two minutes ahead.

11:02 pm

this is when the hours taste the sweetest:

when the night is blanketed by silence, space

where ticking reminders of throwaway time used to be.

when syrup child drowns, heedless

in pools of unvarnished moonlight that never ebb or flow.

she paints shadows beneath her eyes and calls it a masterpiece. 

she pretends that they will not wash away in a tide

of scoldings the next morning. [the night trickles onwards.] and sometimes she dreams--

about taking those pins and needles and injecting all of these minutes straight

into her bloodstream, saccharine and swollen

with seconds, and just once she’ll finally feel what it means to (sugar) 

rush, just once she’ll forget how immigrants count

money by seconds and seconds

by the distance they trail behind them.

     it is morning in china.

9:00 am

it is morning in america.

immigrant mother is glazing pancakes sugar-sweet and smacks

the side of the bottle. syrup child plunges from her high.

she glimmers viscous in the sharpened tines of a fork

and peers into yawning mouths and eager jaws. she sits and watches,

a child of immigrants who have always fought 

for their next breakfast. 

she has always had the world steaming at her fingertips and still

     she pushes the plate away.