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Work by Samara Kothari

Excerpt from: butterfly haori

Faith Choe

12/16/2025

1.) what have I inherited from those translucent veins? 

epigenetics say that I know the grief and grit my mother has endured

and what her mother has endured, and what my grandmother’s mother had endured.

though I do not know her voice, name, or touch,

i know that she scratched and ripped her nails to get by in this life, 

hiding from Japanese soldiers and the butts of their guns, 

or watching a doe’s brain get blasted to bits and pieces by a vermillion reticle.

playing gonggi with bullets while squatting, i can make out 

the delicate pattern of her veins through that paper white skin 

it bears the design of butterfly wings on a gentle haori, flapping 

like when the wind fables through our black strands that i bleached

though if it was always kept natural, i would still wear the same

raven that the starters of my clan had worn on the top of their

sunbathed asphalt heads.