It’s called a site of ruins.
My father says it was an empire. I see nothing
but crumbled columns. A child drops
her mother’s hand, reaches toward a stone
flower. A bird with two faces.
The lions trapped in a museum, far away.
A dragonfly lands in the dry earth.
Glimmering wings, like veins in a pale wrist.
The sun makes it hard to see. To think
there was once a river that flowed here.
A man spits on the ground: mud.
My mother in a headscarf,
her China skin so unlike my own.
The dust like a carpet over the bones.