Fragments on Naturalization

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My father’s name, my mother’s name
I dream the line of letters

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I came not before an apple tree
Malus Sieversii, seeing the faces of silk

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The road before this of blood
The apples tumid with grief

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Ad domestica
A veil of home; a state

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A whole life of waiting
& before that:

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Copyright © 2023 by Snigdha Koirala. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 10, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.