The plane came before the memory of landing.
I was carried through clouds, away from the dust and the heat and everything that knew my spirit and soul.
India slipped from me somewhere above the ocean.
A woman in a purple dress held me close.
She wasn’t family. She smelled like flowers and metal.
Someone pinned a pendant to my shirt —
a shiny oval with a mother and baby on it.
A piece of safety to wear on my chest.
And with that, my country was gone.
The air hissed in my ears.
Pressure built until the world screamed inside my head.
Twenty hours in the sky with dual ear infections; a baby body held by a stranger doing a job.
When we landed, I was passed off easily.
I was used to the woman holding me, but not men.
I had already gone farther than most grown-ups ever would.
The change wasn’t only land to land.
It was inside my head.
At two, language, touch, and safety are braided together.
When the braid snaps, the pieces scatter.
I had to learn the world all over again
through alien smells, alien sounds, alien faces.
I hadn’t heard these sounds for nine months before birth, or the year and a half that followed
nothing felt normal.
Every word came without its echo
without a brain echo to tell me, this means safe.
My mind kept reaching for sounds, and voices that weren’t there,
like hands searching in the dark.
I kept saying Sister, asking for my home in their arms.
New York burned bright and loud.
Too many lights.
Too many teeth behind smiles.
Someone gave me a doll.
In the photos, my eyes are open wide,
trying to understand these white faces.
They took me to Grandma Long’s house.
She held me with the comfort of a woman
who had raised generations of children and grandchildren.
She held me so strongly,
but at the same time with such gentleness.
That night I slept with my arms above my head,
chest open, unguarded.
Safe for a little while.
But it wasn’t home.
We still had to go to Maryland,
far from Grandma Long.
We drove to a place called Quail’s Run.
Another new place
Another bed that didn’t know my name.
Nothing is permanent.
Ten days on American soil —the nerve testing began.
By five months,
the White Coats had me.
The silence was returning.