bà nội has a scar on her stomach as big as two hands: 

it stretches across sagging skin 

& shines silver in the kitchen light 

on rainy days she liked to lift her shirt & show it to us 

pressed our faces against it so we could breathe in incense & past trauma

held our sticky fingers to raised flesh & called it a lesson— 

 

my cousins & i would always gather around her 

the scar the only picture book we could afford 

she would tell us how her mother used a rusty knife as retribution 

for when her brother tripped & fell chasing after her— 

she reminded us that an eye for an eye are the only words to grow up by 

 

when i threw my sister to the ground in anger

i told mẹ that it too was a lesson 

 

when mẹ pulls my face against hers, presses angry fingertips into my red-blotched skin 

she tells me that she is teaching me how to be a good daughter 

grips tighter, teeth mashed together in anger, tells me i am ngu

she doesn’t want to be my mother anymore. 

is this the lesson, mẹ? 

if i tell myself enough times that i am not yours 

i will not belong to this grief that perches upon my shoulders

if i suppress your blood in my veins 

crack open my marrow & erase you out of my cells 

will that stop my fists from curling inward in anger 

& harbouring destruction in my lungs? 

 

some days i wonder if bà nội too, 

pulled mẹ’s face to her, branded red-hot anger into skin 

& called it the deepest lesson of love 

if bà nội ever chased mẹ around with a butcher’s knife 

or slapped a wooden rod against her ass so hard that 

it felt like lightening cleaving the sky & thunder rattling the earth 

 

bà nội grips my hand tight when we walk down the stairs to the airport

gives me a gummy smile as she presses a red envelope in my hand 

pats my cheek & asks me what I am studying in school 

i slam my teeth down—dam against the flood   

did you know, i do not say,

Aristotle believed that storms were 

the exhalations of clouds colliding with one another 

i think you collided with rain clouds bà nội 

i think mẹ is angriest when she is chasing storms

i think i only like the rain when it’s over 

because we didn't have to queue for cheese or for plums

because I had never seen clothes like the ones worn by the mannequins that I had also never seen 

because it was a giddy thing, the way choice could be as much trouble as necessity

because people would ask how I was without expecting an answer, letting me swim underneath their expectations, collecting their discards

because it was easier to capitulate to the language of abundance than to keep hauling the language of loss

because I ran out of things to read

in your tired, hopeful, hungry mind, formed

between the rivulets of sweat and the pitch black craters

where your mother rescued you

from a spotless white room

filled you with her stories, and her mother’s stories, and her mother’s mother’s stories,

and though this spiral winds far into the distance, somehow

I am holding the end of the thread in my hand

I feed it into my spindle,

And I try to weave a shelter, a resting

point in the weary history of living and living and living,

I press my foot down again and again and again

I look up and find I am still running

I find my favourite fruit, ripe yellow mangoes,

cut, peeled, laid out on the kitchen counter

Instead of I’m sorry

    You flop onto my bed with the cat in your arms, 

ask if I want to get bubble tea

Instead of I miss you

    I send you a video of a frog 
with a tiny, flower petal hat

    basking in the warm yellow sun

Instead of I forgive you

    You dig out my favorite oolong tea, tucked

in the shadows of your pantry from years, and years ago

Instead of I was wrong

    I write a poem about you, hide it deep in dog eared pages

    let time fade the ink off the page

holds the tea I discard

hot leaves and liquid, accumulating and cooling

My bowl is energetic on the inside

but quiet on the outside

is charming and gracious

even though I gave it a dull job

(to receive mess 

to hold something with no further use)

My bowl works while I rest.

One day the glaze makes a sound

Like the when water hits ice 

and I worry 

the bowl isn't happy 

Later in my dark apartment

The bowl is dry, my apartment is cool 

I hear the bowl crackle again

I worry I am asking too much of it

I want my bowl to be with me forever 

I will go easy on my bowl 

Let it rest while I work