Someone always asks me “where are you from”

And I want to say a body is a body of matter flung

From all corners of the universe and I am a patriot

Of breath of sin of the endless clamor out the window

But what I say is I am from nowhere

Which is also a convenience a kind of lie

When I was sitting in the Mumbai airport this January

On a forty-hour layover rushing home because

My mother had had a stroke and could not speak

I wondered about my words

Perhaps I am from my words

Because the basic biography is ordinary

Born in Croydon to a mother and a father who

On different sides of a national border

Were married in war time and had to reunite in England

The only place they could both get to

Born at home—76 Bingham Street

Midwived and not doctored into the world

Taken back to India when the war was over

Where I came into language and of the seven

That were spoken in the house I began speaking four as the same

Then to the cold Canadian north we went to a town that no longer exists

On the other side of Cross Lake from the Indians

Who lost everything because of the dam my father was helping to build

Then to Winnipeg then to New York City

Then to Buffalo

Which I can claim

I can say I am from Buffalo because

It is a city of poets

The city of Lucille Clifton

I arrive there in cold January to find my mother

A little slowed down but still self-possessed enough

To cook meals for everyone

Even if she didn’t remember the names of all the spices she was using

She talks by the time I arrive but slowly and deliberately

And she has to listen very carefully to be able to respond

She pauses while she talks and cocks her head while she thinks

She does not criticize me nor say anything about my wild hair

Our ordinary silence does not seem as suffocating

Because I wait patiently while she strains to find each word

And what on earth does it mean that

I almost like my mother better this way

When my mother went to her medical appointment

I got out my copy of good woman and combed through its lines

To find the addresses where Lucille lived and grew up

I climb into the car with a map and a journal and drive

Through the snow to find those places and take photographs

Of the empty lots where the houses once stood

Listen:

I have no answer to your question

I am not kidding when I tell you:

I earned my own voice

The shape it makes in the world holds me

I have no hometown no mother tongue

I have not been a good son