Emigrant

by Kalani Padilla

The cabbages will survive at 24 degrees fahrenheit

whether they tolerate or desire the frost
is their secret.

One winter a lover and I took turns
driving between doubt

and northwestern Montana
He made me beautiful      promises

he hung them on my ears and pressed them
into the big sky of my upper back      this is why

I’d go to him in subzero snow,
in an unheated Jeep why     I kissed him

with the trust that may have
put my ancestors on ships

across the Pacific and put their
cabbage seeds in fallow ground      why

I unwrapped foods in his kitchen
that I saved for special occasions:

from a yellow cloth, three sheets of kombu
with the sea dried into their folds

for safekeeping; ajitsuki eggs dyed in tea.
I set his table with two bowls of warm broth,

chashu, ramen I sliced by hand.
On another plate, four manju

baked gold, with bellies of crushed
adzuki and sugar.

After he drained his ramen bowl
I placed one of these neatly

in his palm. When he bit into it,
I put my toes under the arch of his foot like

I want you but had no gesture to say

like residency       tribe
harbor

my food comes from home countries
with no home inside me,

A certain silence gathered
between my legs when he came —

my mothertongue unsalted and slathered
on his shore —

I like how you touch me
keep going he said                 So I gripped

at his varnish
and emigrated to his gated harbor

We groaned hunger against hunger
two gunnels in the dark,

unnavigable, full of ice,
volcanic rock, stars.

Kalani Padilla is a Filipino-American and Kama’aina poet from Mililani, Hawai’i. Kalani holds degrees in Poetry and Theology from the University of Montana (MFA) and Whitworth University (MA; BA). Currently, Kalani tends home in Missoula, MT as a pastry chef and writing tutor. Kalani’s poems, essays, and short stories live with Bamboo Ridge Press, Waxwing, Waterwheel, Solstice, Poets.org, Poetry Northwest, Figure 1, etc.