A Childhood in China

.

She asks where she comes from.
Her mother tells her
they picked her out of the garbage,
for pity’s sake. A village so remote
they never saw a train, never mind a car.
The rice rations ran out,
so they ate pumpkins for a month.
A classmate, seeing a pink eraser
for the first time, ate it, thinking it was candy.
The only one with a sweater,
of the few with shoes, she was allowed to eat
a whole egg, by herself, for her birthday.
Father stalking a stray dog, then smashing it
with a brick, right between the eyes.
Cooking it on a makeshift grill in the woods,
away from the village communal cafeteria,
so they could eat the most of it,
sucking every bit of meat and marrow,
making a broth of the bones. And after a movie
in an open field one summer night,
walking home alone by starlight,
the Milky Way spread its arms around her.

.