Born Away

I’m born in a hospital in Athens

Where my parents are vacationing

Something about it

--The birth

It spooked my mother

And she wouldn’t leave

She wouldn’t leave Greece

My father didn’t know what to do

But his wife was hysterical

Saying she wouldn’t leave

That she wouldn’t go back

To America

And then she wasn’t hysterical

She was calm

She was calm and still saying

That she wouldn’t go back

And somehow

That was worse

So…

She didn’t go back

My father did

And that’s how I’m born

I won’t make it back to America

Until I’m ready to go to college

And by then

It’s this weird phenomenon

Of growing up in Europe

Speaking Greek

With a mother who spoke American

And not just American

But New England

A father who came to visit twice

Before I was ten

And then just gave up

A part of me always wanted

To see the place

My mother never wanted

To go back to

There’s this thing, I think

Where everything you parents

Speak about in hushed tones

Becomes a fixation

For their child

When I don’t get into any American colleges

Because I’m a terrible student

Who spends more time

Smoking and going out at night

I buy a plane ticket anyway

With money I save

From the birthday cards

My American grandparents send me

When I get to America

The first thing I’ll notice

Is the smell of motor oil

When I step outside the airport

To hail a taxi

All I know is that my father

Lives next to a college

Where he teaches Intro to Marketing

And when I find him

He claims he never got my seventeen emails

Letting him know I’d be coming

And all he’ll offer me is the couch

In his basement

Laying on that couch

Looking up at my father’s

Mold-stained

Basement ceiling

I thought about geography

There I was

Thousands and thousands

Of miles away

From the only home

I’d ever known

And I thought--

I still don’t feel

Settled in my skin

So many people

Are born like me

Somewhere they’re not supposed to be

And convinced

That it’s all a question

Of winding up

Somewhere else

To make them feel

Like they’ve figured it all out

At eighteen, I don’t have the insight

To figure that out

And truthfully

I won’t have it

For years and years

But at least at that moment

I know what I have to do

I get up off the couch

I quietly exit my father’s house

And I start walking

I walk until I find a hill

Overlooking the city I’m in

And I try to imagine

The world

Being a million times

Smaller than it is

It would have been easier

With a map or a globe, but--

Sometimes a lit-up city

In the dead of night, it--

Well, it can look like

The whole world

It can look like

Whatever you want it

To look like

If you look at it

Just the right way