Inertia

Poem by Joanna Deng

When my Ma tells me inertia is a law
so that means it can be broken,
I watch her well-worn tongue slip across her teeth
like how I watch the little snakes in our garden
seek shelter in whatever small things they see.

That night, as two little serpents escape
into the traffic-light-lined streets,
I chase the slower one
that always ends up shivering
in a direction back home.

So when, one day,
my Ma hands me a rifle
and tells me to cock it at the bushes in our garden
where the homesick snakes are sleeping and the Americans can’t see,
I try to explain to her the word ricochet,

how an object’s direction will change
if you hit it against something hard enough.

I try to explain to her
how her IV is drooling,
or how she should head back to bed,
but she is insistent on finding anything alive
and claiming them as her own

like how in her motherland, she grew used
to stealing quail eggs or hatchlings each morning—
and it was all okay
as long as no one found out.

A few years later, when my Ma asks me
if there are still snakes
in the backyard,
I peel her the last of our sticky mandarins,
tap the few-year-old bullet wound beneath my rib,
and tell her

she’s found them
and stolen them all.
Slippery, slick little things,

like her words—
diced
and vomited—
by the time she learns
that inertia is a law
but it’s more like a habit.

Once you’re in it
you never get out.