I have spent my life fleeing from that house. But when my aging father calls and orders, “Time to return home,” my body obeys.

When I emerge from the thin shell of the 787 Dreamliner, the air is humid, laden with wet forest and pollution, my skin the first to recognize its birth home. Taoyuan International Airport is a marvel of glass and steel, bilingual signage everywhere to welcome the English-speaking tourists—and the illiterate diaspora.

I have gone / come
home.