Our apartment in Stockholm had a blue kitchen floor, or so I am told. 

I was three when they brought me back to America,

where both my parents were born.

I wanted my blue floor, I am told I screamed,

in the English-Swedish hybrid I spoke then, when the world

that was not my parents had a different language.

And then everything used the same set of words,

and the kitchen floor became so white I couldn’t remember the blue—

not the floor, nor its shade, nor even the words I once used to call them.

Image by: norhafydzah mahfodz