blowing smoke on the wood
there are many people who descend
from the northern region. after the Mongolian invasion there
were only villages spread throughout Siberia with Russian
namesakes as their lineage. “now we are all one of the
northern region people, except the blue eyed people,” my
mother sais, who are called the pure Russians she sais, they
come from the eastern north she sais, with their long blonde
hair brushing the ground. they don’t have slanted eyes she
sais, although many of us are first born with them. my
brother had the most slanted eyes of all of us when he got
born. there is my mother, my mother would sais, there she is in
his eyes, she would sais. when he outgrew them like the rest
of us, he passed as merely a foreigner in a foreign land, like
many of us, but still he clings to memories that came even
before him, somehow trudging a line where none of us see
one, somehow telling stories that don’t exist in the world
anymore. but he passes by one of them, my mother sais,
except he is now too tall and too big, not quite like a pure
Russian, she sais, they are more delicate. the mother of my
mother comes into my dreams, pushing a long lineage where
there was none before, drawing a picture on invisible papers,
blowing smoke on the wood. she had two sons and two
daughters like a woman would, with her slanted eyes and
thick black braids would, like a memory I could cling to in my
dreams, holding her thick hair with my small hands, blowing
in the northern wind, as she would want me to, the daughter
of her daughter too, the son of her face wrinkled skin, the
solace of the autumn sunset.