Squirrels and Foxes: A Story in Two Parts

Contributed by Mariko Rooks

Chapter 1

In my father’s eyes
Squirrel will always be 
kinezumi:
the word 
he uttered before a Kansas kindergarten teacher 
when he saw a bushy tail and wide eyes scamper
across the windowline
the word 
whose absence echoed through the whir of clicking numbers
on a black rotary phone
when his mother heard that afternoon
“stop speaking
so much Japanese at home it’s
stunting his development before
our very eyes”

On a cold January morning, my father sees a flash of brown.
He opens the sliding glass door of our balcony 
to the sound of cascading rain,
stares 
at the small body
huddled on a dripping branch
the weight of water droplets
descending from dark green leaves 
towards the earth below 
his eyes 
say kinezumi
they tell me 
this story every time.  

Chapter 2

I wonder, when I have a child, 
if my eyes will tell the story of foxes:
The kind made of smokey grey mascara
smudging white skin into a sickly imitation of almost yellow.
Shiny, manicured nails pull double eyelids out of shape 
Until it it’s impossible to see 
who, exactly who is being blinded
When whiteness is distorted into
folds
slants
and curves. 

In Japanese folklore, kitsune shift between worlds
Walk the lines between fur and skin to send messages
joining
earth and air
Have to remember, each time they transform
What words they need to speak 
Kitsune, they say
Remember friends and debts
Which is to say, what we might owe each other

Stories further West rage against metamorphosis 
There will be no flowers placed on naijins every Sunday to honor the beauty of decay when 
white men imagine a God who does not trust that
which dares to have the freedom to change. 
Remember, they say, that whole apple situation? 
Instead,
slanted yellow eyes
Will pretend to be your friend
run shifty hands over your hair
your eyelids
your tongue
Cast them as disease
Or exotic if you’re lucky
until you 
turn around and find a fox 
Gorging itself on the flesh of your henhouse
Flinging red blood over the damp smell of yellow straw.
White teeth
stripping tender meat from feather-covered bones
is the sound 
of another TikTok challenge because
these days 
everything Asian is going viral.