1 Half
At lunch, I sat on the side of the hard court with a bunch of kids
That I had already forgotten the names of
I proceeded to pour salsa on the crispy, steaming lasagna in my bento box
I went ahead and shoved it chunk by chunk into my mouth with my chopsticks
I have a mouthful of tortilla and beef when
A kid who sported a Mozambican football shirt and huge afro faces me
We talk, in English, and I answer his questions about me
Where did you live before?
I say: Patan, Nepal
Where is your house in Maputo?
I say that I live in an apartment in Armando Tivane
Where are you from?
I tell him that my mother is Nepali, and my father is Swiss-
Mum or dad, who do you love more?
Excuse me.
Switzerland or Nepal, which one do you identify with more?
I don’t like when people ask me this
Because I feel I am being asked to give up
An eye
An ear
Half a tongue and nose
And half of my nerves
Leaving me senseless to half of my world
I feel I am being asked to give up Two quarters of the curls coating my head
Two point five litres of the five litres of blood bolting through my veins
Three sixths of the skin that surrounds my muscles
Five tenths of my fingers and five of my ten toes
Fourteen out of twenty-eight of the teeth around my mouth’s walls
I feel I am being asked to give up fifty percent of my brain
And all memories and all of the memories in it
And on top of all that
A hundred and three out of the two hundred and six bones in my body
I feel as if I am being asked to choose over an entire HALF...of my family
An entire HALF of my identity
An entire HALF of my body, my soul
And my heart which has both a square and mountain shaped flag on it
Both a brown woman and a white man in it
It has both Dhal Bhat and Fondu
St. Gallen and Kathmandu
Both Santis and Materhorn, and Everest and Makalu
I am not a two-piece jigsaw puzzle
I am an alloy
The mixture of two elements to form one substance.