i. america i plant flowers in your land because it makes me feel closer to you. dig into my botanical garden with earth-filled nails as if i could unearth my identity and find my roots in your soil. as if you would love me a shade deeper, as if the stars would gaze back at me. days without a sign of flourishing & i profess that yes, i whisper white lies to myself that no, i am not naïve. i am not a flower child craving mother nature’s love, i am not a wanderer hungry for my homeland’s stars. & now i bury my green card & hope it flowers into something earthly, douse it in tap water & it grows into a dandelion: stars in the grass. so i whisper it clean of its spores, make a wish, & america this is what you’ll see when you wake: a weed all along.

ii. interlude: i decide that flowers are the epitome of desire, that stars & white lies are no better than the earth: empty. there’s something cruelly ephemeral about beautiful things, you know?

iii. singapore i deluge this dandelion weed in pandan extract & coconut milk, sing to it in my mother tongues & it blossoms into a papilionanthe (1): beautiful reincarnation. & now i water your flower with tears because it reminds me of you, my homeland, though it wilts the next morning. singapore you always leave us star-crossed, & me desperate for resurrection, wondering why you never told me that saltwater kills flowers. & yes, i drink flower wine by the brim but no, i can never forget that i killed a flower like a living, breathing being & after: i hold wilted shreds to my heart and whisper white lies to myself that no, i am not a murderer. that i don’t crave to swallow more wine like salvation & second comings, that i don’t write requiems and eulogies for a demise of my own unmaking. i am plunging fingertips like knives into soil, hungry to revive my ancestry, to unearth my roots with my own lucid eyes. & now i emerge with earth-filled nails & soiled knuckles, with nothing & everything of a rootless girl who wished on too many stars, whispered too many white lies, & yet

somewhere in a dream:

roots from dead fingertips, &

eternal rebirth.

1 - botanical name of the national flower of singapore. it is sometimes referred to as the hybrid orchid, vanda miss joaquim, the singapore orchid, or papilionanthe miss joaquim.