Uchida, Kyoko

English

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© Providence College  The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions.  The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL  Volume 5 | 1996 From Mother Tongues And Other Untraveling, A Sequence Kyoko Uchida  Kyoko Uchida FROM MOTHER TONGUES AND OTHER UNTRAVELINGS, A SEQUENCE With the money she sent for my birthday, I buy a pair of black suede pumps in summer. They're for a wedding I am going to, the kind of shoes she'd approve of, a grown woman's shoes. I wobble a little in them; I'm used to tennis shoes, flat-heeled sandals, hiking boots. These are what I've been walking away in, so that when I visit, I come in looking like a child out playing and called to dinner. Don't you have anything nice to wear, they say, she and my mother; it is what makes me theirs, inadequate and needy. With every birthday, every year I call my own, they remind me of my daughterhood, of what I owe. When they have dressed me properly I would be whole, returned; I would grow into what they buy me to wear. What will they say now that these new heels won't send me back to them elegant and sure, walking in the right direction? What will they say now that I am travelling away as ever, in my heels, in my resemblances, these slow blood mi-grations? 

From \u3cem\u3eMother Tongues And Other Untraveling\u3c/em\u3e, A Sequence

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https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1370&amp;context=prosepoem

From \u3cem\u3eMother Tongues And Other Untraveling\u3c/em\u3e, A Sequence

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