It's getting difficult to tell
these Asian disasters
apart from one another.

Sri Lanka still seems only two clicks away
And I don't want to blame CNN
Because Wes Anderson's brow can only stay
in a sympathetic swell for so many special segments
And with tsunamis, and storms, and cyclones,
Who really has the time to hold their finger to the wind
through it all?
Who really has enough buckets to pass around
benefits to organize
or checks to write?
And despite the fact that I feel my heart drop
to death tolls risen
With this election,
and these bills
and those gas prices
and my worries that are a bit too personal to pin as petty
Lately
I haven't quite had time for tragedy.


So maybe it's because this time it was China
and I'm Chinese
Or that it was an earthquake
and I'm Californian
But even with my guilty attempts to ignore the world for
just a little bit while I piece mine together
I'm left sitting here
Shaken.

There's no pretty language for it.
The earthquake in China makes me very sad.

I feel a bit ethnocentric
Because it shouldn't matter whether it happened in China
or Afghanistan, or Iran or Idaho
and I don't know what I can do
to place myself outside of this situation more than I already am
half a world away
But I can't help but notice as
I watch that screen
That it wouldn't have been that much of a stretch
for it to be me on a stretcher.

I never thought I'd say this
But amidst the dust
and rubble
and blood
We do all kind of look the same.

But I don't know if I could have that threshold for pain,
to watch my country crumble on my family
Limbs limp and pale,
impaled, while still instilled in the rest of the world
is this notion of a nation that
slaughters its daughters,
imprisons its sons,
murders its neighbors,
and blankets terror in the heart of Americans,
like me,
horrified of Chinese,
like me,
China,
I don't fear you,
But I'm scared
if I ever wanted to come home
that you wouldn't take me back.

Especially, not like this,
with your front door collapsed,
Half a million of your own vanished,
I've felt banished my entire life
and I know your buildings are hazardous
and people are sleeping on the streets
and maybe I'm being American
and maybe I'm being naive
but amidst pending war
and rice crises
and Olympics politics
right now
all I want to do
is come home to you.

In Beichuan,
when the ground began to quiver,
A woman knelt over her three month old baby
to create a flesh shield for the debris.
Five days later,
amidst broken brick
and shattered glass
on the floor
the mother was found dead,
knelt over her infant
eyes shut
sleeping
without a scratch.
While the city fell the shambles,
her mother managed to leave her cellphone
in her daughter's pocket
that read,
"My dear baby
If you survive
Please remember,
I love you."

So this is about the victims of tragedy--
not quite for them
Because I don't have much more than my genetics to draw a connection
And since 50,000 is only a dent in the population
I don't know how much good a dedication from one of your forgotten children
can do
But know that even an ocean and several generations away,
China,
Please remember,
I love you.