Aftershocks

by Nadia Owusu

Much of America felt familiar to me when I arrived. America is experienced everywhere in the world. But calling myself American doesn’t feel quite accurate.

My father used to say that no matter where lines were drawn, all human beings, all living things, are connected. We all belong everywhere on this small planet. We all belong to one another.

the navel marks both connection and disconnection. It is corporeal evidence of maternal linkage, but it is also the place on our bodies from which we are separated from our mothers.

I hadn’t told George that I had used a few other accents—voices—before settling into my current one. I hadn’t wanted to tell him my voice is a fault zone, that it is really multiple voices that grate against one another. I didn’t think he’d like that about me. It would, I believed, lead him to wonder if my voice—the voice that told him I loved him—was to be trusted.

My memories are about leaving and being left. They are about absence.

An earthquake is the ground breaking and the heart breaking. It is frictional forces and literary device. A fault is a weakness. A woman’s body is a weakness. A wound is a weakness I can’t help but pick at. Some wounds never heal.

Look into my eyes. See my glowing skin. My pores are open. I am made of the earth, flesh, ocean, blood, and bone of all the places I tried to belong to and all the people I long for. I am pieces. I am whole. I am home.