Addendum
       

So I've tried to wrap my head around certain massacres.
Lola Carmen at two years old with her four siblings, covered
in her father's blood. Another land and its history.

We can, I think, look at human history as a series of massacres.
So we can, in fact, see ourselves, see each other as products and
by-products of these massacres.

I'm struck by how unlikely we are to have made it here, against
the odds — like if that bomb, that shrapnel fell just inches away
from where it did in 1945, everything could have been

different. What if greatgrandpa didn't die like that? Trying
to flee Manila with his wife, pulling their five children
in a vegetable cart.

What if his family — my family — didn't
end up soaking in his blood?
                                                                Imagine no bombs.

So everything can and does hinge upon inches, upon seconds,
upon chance, upon my grandmother's mother, my grandmother,
my mother, their migration,

our unlikely survival.

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from Salt Hill
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