This is not a complete poem, just pieces of one that I started in the bath, when I was trying to let myself go:
The first time I heard my father cry, his voice bent like an iron under fire.
The small vases she gave me are overturned, drying on a towel by the sink. The first gift he ever gave her was a pair of vases. One is chipped from its residence in my house. It is winter now, and I have not bought flowers for weeks.
It is heartbreak. No one will ever love me like that again.
This pain, these tears, this shaking--I do not will any of it. It isn't even mine. It belongs to all of our immigrant bodies, and the memory of our glorious ships, our glorious mothers.
What about us? Who will hold us and sort through our pieces? What about my father? Who will he turn to? Who will be bigger than me when I no longer have a mother? Than him when he no longer has a wife? Than us, when our rim is chipped?
We took our shapes in those vessels. It is the shape we are. I am not accountable for my own brown legs, or my own shrugging laugh. This skin is a reformation of her body. More of it. And so it will go on.
1 comment:
Isn't it interesting that as you sit reflecting, the skies open up as if she wants to join in your frustration and pain. She is there dancing on Portage Bay and is in the frustrated wind of a November storm. She here with you in Seattle and she will be with you wherever you go.
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