"Visitor" by Jeddie Sophronius

Image Credit: K. Mitch Hodge, obtained and licensed through Unsplash

Visitor

Even my birthplace
was never my own—I live
unwanted from the country before,

the country to come.
This, too, is a burden that
my father can’t hide under the yoke

of his shirt, like a
lump people would call sin, or
the wage of it. My mother mourns

in the only way
most Indonesians know how:
every day, every night in silence.

Someday, her grief will
morph into a marble child.
It will stand in the living room for

visitors to see.
I know, I’m everything and
nothing at once: the child who survived,

the child who shouldn’t.
Still, I carry a shadow
on my shoulders when I cross between

continents. When I return,
my mother shows me
what she has done to the place: black drapes,

ceramic tiles, fake
tulips, and a lump of stone
beside the old piano, waiting

to be sculpted.

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Jeddie Sophronius was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia and the poetry editor at Meridian. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He spends his pastime getting defeated in chess.