Heritage

We met at uni.

You, Wisconsin smile and all that

blue in your eyes, proverbial flax in your hair.

Me, despite numerous tribes in my blood,

the most unremarkable Caucasian son.

You claimed Teuton heritage,

I claim the Baltic Sea and the pines of Sorbia.

I remember your fondness for BMWs

'A pinnacle of German engineering!'

You had nothing but contempt for the P601.

I remember you drinking lager.

'A beer is only a beer brewed according to the law of 1516.'

You lovingly compared it to the sweetest girl you knew back home

while you emptied a Bohemian blonde into the sink

calling it swirl.

I remember you loved speeding on the Autobahn;

Cursed crumbling country roads of Lubusz.

I remember trying to teach you

about Brandenburg avenues lined with trees

hoping you'd see them differently

in the diffusion of light and fog

on either side of the Oder.

I remember you praising the monuments of Berlin

deriding rickety Polish villages.

I remember trying to make you understand

that I could navigate both

for all of Prussia underneath it.

I will forever remember your declaration

to skip Oświęcim because it had nothing to do with you.

I knew you were American then.