"Naming, however kind, is always an act of estrangement." ~ Aracelis Girmay brown the soil, brown the sand we call sable that water paints before it recedes into itself; brown the shutters of heaven from which the eyes of ancients regard the world they left with us. brown the sides of wooden ships swelled with elegies of blind ambition, so certain of following the fateful stars. brown the beautiful bark of cassia shavings, the dark- tipped nails of clove, the red-tinged roots of galangal. burnish the sides of brass hawk bells until you can no longer tell their gleam from gold. the reefs are lined with coral, the straits with subterranean eyes and mangrove roots. crack open a rock to learn of lineage— turn up the earth, run your brown fingers along the burns and fading scars.