jamie doom

I think I should know

when I’m looking at

a picture of me. But instead,

I squint hard, tilt my head

and whisper

vaguely

“that’s me.”

That person isn’t me.

I’ve twirled

in rain-soaked shoes

at a wedding

then argued the

finer points of economics

at a funeral. I’ve

found a sentence here

while misplacing

volumes of words there.

I’ve laughed till my eyes hurt

at jokes in a dialect I’ve never heard,

and cried once or twice almost like

I meant it.

I’ve asked for

and received the kindness of

strangers who seem to

recognize me even though

they’ve never been to America.

I’ve been kicked

getting on a train in Suzhou. I’ve

kissed a pretty girl, cute babies,

old ladies, lost friends, black cats,

a lame dog, and the last paragraph

of a book. The dog kissed me back.

My smallest niece has

held my hand—all her fingers

around one of mine—while

smiling for no reason.

That person looks like me, but he hasn’t

lost enough love, or seen enough

tea leaves, or sang enough sadness.

Not yet.