You Will Sit Down and Someone Will Wash Your Feet

One day my mother forgets to tell me my father is dying.
          This never comes as a surprise.

To be born is to leave one body of water for another.
          To be a daughter is to warn someone before I go

to apply for a passport, drugstore lighting the face
          of a different version of my face. The overnight bus

to another waiting room, requesting the exchange
          of this country for one farther-off.

Inside my father’s body there is a ribboning
          of canals, clear and dark. One catches fire,

a heavy gray smolder. They keep dumping blue dye
          into the water, the only way known to trace a path

through the smoke. I spend hours staring at a map
          of my new city, uncertain if it’s true

that I’ve never been here before.

Author of the article

Hannah Kroonblawd is a PhD student in English Studies at Illinois State University, where she works in the Publications Unit and teaches writing courses. Off campus, she can be found watering her peace lily and watching K-dramas. A graduate of the MFA program at Oregon State University, her recent work can be found in Washington Square Review, Blue Earth Review, and Radar Poetry, among others.