If you open up any atlas



and take a look at a map of the world,



almost every single one of them



slices the Pacific Ocean in half.



To the human eye,



every map centers all the land masses on Earth



creating the illusion



that water can handle the butchering



and be pushed to the edges



of the world.



As if the Pacific Ocean isn’t the largest body



living today, beating the loudest heart,



the reason why land has a pulse in the first place.







The audacity one must have to create a visual so



violent as to assume that no one comes



from water so no one will care



what you do with it



and yet,



people came from land,



are still coming from land,



and look what was done to them.







When people ask me where I’m from,



they don’t believe me when I say water.



So instead, I tell them that home is a machete



and that I belong to places



that don’t belong to themselves anymore,



broken and butchered places that have made me



a hyphen of a woman:



a Samoan-American that carries the weight of both



colonizer and colonized,



both blade and blood.







California stolen.



Samoa sliced in half stolen.



California, nestled on the western coast of the most powerful



country on this planet.



Samoa, an island so microscopic on a map, it’s no wonder



people doubt its existence.



California, a state of emergency away from having the drought



rid it of all its water.



Samoa, a state of emergency away from becoming a saltwater cemetery



if the sea level doesn’t stop rising.



When people ask me where I’m from,



what they want is to hear me speak of land,



what they want is to know where I go once I leave here,



the privilege that comes with assuming that home



is just a destination, and not the panic.



Not the constant migration that the panic gives birth to.



What is it like? To know that home is something



that’s waiting for you to return to it?



What does it mean to belong to something that isn’t sinking?



What does it mean to belong to what is causing the flood?







So many of us come from water



but when you come from water



no one believes you.



Colonization keeps laughing.



Global warming is grinning



at all your grief.



How you mourn the loss of a home



that isn’t even gone yet.



That no one believes you’re from.







How everyone is beginning



to hear more about your island



but only in the context of



vacations and honeymoons,



football and military life,



exotic women exotic fruit exotic beaches



but never asks about the rest of its body.



The water.



The islands breathing in it.



The reason why they’re sinking.



No one visualizes islands in the Pacific



as actually being there.



You explain and explain and clarify



and correct their incorrect pronunciation



and explain







until they remember just how vast your ocean is,



how microscopic your islands look in it,



how easy it is to miss when looking



on a map of the world.







Excuses people make



for why they didn’t see it



before.





