A note: This is a new poem which I plan to submit to a women's poetry competition next month. I'd really appreciate any constructive criticism- likes, dislikes, areas needing clarity, etc. Thanks!
- Kim
As the wheels on the bus lurched noisily forward
The stranger sharing my seat and I exchanged awkward greetings
Our hellos contrasting sharply in their dissimilarity
I expected nothing but a mundane journey home
But as the bus gathered momentum, so did our conversation
Blowing flimsy, external difference out the window like litter
Left fluttering in the void between here and nowhere
Those around us may have wondered
What in the world we had in common
She, the granddaughter of Japanese rice farmers
I, of Texas cattle ranchers
Yet quickly we arrived at the plenitude that would bind us
Both of us this year had slipped suddenly into decade number three
Each distinctly unsettled at the way twenty-nine so suddenly becomes thirty
At the chasm that can separate one day from the next
At the way life metamorphoses over night
While we are yet not ready
She, upset to be still unwed
I, still to be childless
Lost were both of us in the labyrinth of family and career
Alone each seems such a perfect objective
Yet combined, irreconcilable
She tells me that she represents a multitude of her countrywomen
Back home in Japan, new families have been added to endangered species list
Inducing stern statesmen into sorcery
The government is waving bills in front of bellies as if feminine bodies will round by magic
Sha-zam!
I shared with her my search for a nesting spot on the rockface of career climbing
Where I can hatch my unborn children
My imagination already crowded with their presence
Statistics give me five more years before my body decides for me
Each birthday I mourn the clock’s tick-tock-ticking
Clearly, we had turned the corner of casual politeness
Things were now too personal not to press forward
So with an hour to go
We scooted closer
And began engaging in that transcendent language of storytelling
Holding the present up to the past like glass prisms in the sun beaming through bus windows
Refracting on the seats our dancing rainbows
We crisscrossed through dizzying years and distant generations
Until arriving, finally, at the crossroads of the present
Where it is our turn to make choices about our families’ futures
The continuation of traditions, memories, facial features
But before we arrived at any solutions, the bus slowed at my stop
Where we actually hugged goodbye
Stuffing pockets with scraps of paper
Marked with bumpily written contact details
I felt the loss of parting with someone kindred
This was such an unexpected sisterhood
Discovered in a single afternoon with the woman who was
Only an hour-and-a-half ago
Merely the stranger sharing my seat
Miyazaki, with beautiful round face and almond eyes
And me, with skin milk-white and eyes blue, just like my mother’s
