fulfillment unto itself

By Kevin Zhang

FEB 28, 2024

I told my motherland, I can read you a little now, and I wasn’t talking about language. 

I told my motherland, I will never be there, and I wasn’t talking about boarding the plane. 

I told my motherland, I can only see diaspora, and I wasn’t talking about disconnect, 

though even just the word reminds some of us invisible. I wish to be coddled tonight—

though I need you to know I wasn’t talking about dating preferences either, 

though they do always run imposterous; there’s this thermal misunderstanding 

of what the hands direct the body to desire, within or without, my body or

your body, my house or your house, a family of expectations couldn’t really help, 

much less say. I don’t ever really listen— maybe I was talking about the milieu

I realized myself in, which now I realize myself in. The sound of my socialization 

succeeded me for some time: I was met by English and only in English can I speak myself 

into existence as a burgeoning thing. I was met by those who have never felt belonging for the soil, 

felt the ache of being seed to wind like I am still searching for a place to be buried not upon death 

but upon growing tall again. Motherland, I mean it when I say this life feels half-hearted and 

I won’t even begin with the parts of my identity that almost feel let in like a dream, 

like my name, fictitious as the shelter I grew up in. Assimilation a continuation of 

leaving behind home. I must have begun already, but Motherland it is how we must 

remind ourselves (not just others) to cling to the specifics of our ethnic credibility,

introduce ourselves succinct in a field of whiteness— swallowsome as it is, our muted bodies colliding

into each other like seawater. sometimes only approximations of the light. light like whiteness, whiteness

like light: sometimes I am blinded, sometimes I am assuaged. It will never save me; a buoy is painted red to 

a sea. It will never save me; as long as I am soldered to this speculation, I will be coming up for air, 

we are still tainted, not just by how far we are from light, but how close we are too. It will never save me,

as long as we are still searching for vantage points of appropriation and upturning the empire’s hand.

The empire has shown its hand so many times before playing and yet here we are still polluted; 

non sequitur in each other’s skies. The other week, someone in bed told me they almost wished

I were a women— and I didn’t even feel grave, only I have been here before. This lobby is a cramped 

space and I feel like I have been here too long, sometimes it feels all too wishful. But I'll say, Motherland, 

I think I finally have what it takes to leave. I don’t mean America, or even family where you are. 

I love us counterparts; I was talking about letting go of false memories, never known joys. 

For Motherland, I know this is difficult to hear, but I will never be your child and 

I will never be your lover, yet I will likely never forget the feeling of being the space in 

between homes. I will still catch light. I will still speak sound into the body. 

we will all still catch light, for we are secessions of the land just as much as it seceded us. 

making something of a home out of what passes through the window. 

Kevin Zhang is the literary arts editor of Illume Magazine.