In my everyday life, I am so used to not looking like most people, that it is startling at first when I am with people who do look like me. But arriving in Thailand is such a shock of welcome and familiarity, that it quickly becomes comfortable, easy. The faces greeting us at the airport really do look like mine. The words I hear rush to find me, name me, claim me as one of theirs. “Fon” is my Thai name, meaning rain — for my rainy birthday. It meets me when I return.
We walked off the plane
into a tangle of arms,
brown, stretched towards us,
a rush of sound, the
voices naming us,
again and again,
until I became the girl
I was 25 years before.
“Fon,” they said.
The name traveled through
body and memory,
waking long sleeping cells,
so that I knew it as mine.
Amphibious 