tangled gold necklaces knotted/ with grief, chains my mother will not break.

January 14, 2025
I collect everything that remains, even though there exists
no suitcase large enough to hold the warmth of her hands.
I have no claim on her vowel shaped camelias, tea stained
cups or her purses. My grandmother said to divide up her things,
and my mother dutifully cut them up into inscrutable scraps,
rendering each belonging useless to quiet any argument. The only
whole things left are the tangled gold necklaces knotted
with grief, chains my mother will not break. There is no guarantee
that I will be able to pass through security with the shattered
jade shards I scavenge and conceal in my palms. When we gather,
what is left is left in pieces, unintelligible. At the funeral
parlor when I say 等一下, we don’t need to leave her
right now, my uncle turns to me and says with eyes wide
that I said that just like her. Her voice, already deep inside.
That I said these words, just like her. Her voice, already deep inside?
I open my mouth and as an apparition, she is presenced, whole,
in sound. I feel as though I have let my language wither,
my tongue untethered with disuse. Yet this magic will summon
from deep within breath, within body, this similar song.
Strange how recordings of yourself talking always sound like
a second person, not the same voice that reverbs against your own
spine, lungs and thorax, not the voice so familiar that comes deep
from the belly. It so hard to hear the clear shapes of one’s own voice
once they are breathed out of your mouth as your voice was never
your own. My voice echoes against a body puzzle of ancestors organs,
reconstituted, a vessel built against the linearity of history.
I press record and let the ribbon loose, untangle the satin-frayed ends.
Let them unfurl my tongue. Let them speak back to me.