just the giver of x or
y. Why is that hard?
The looks on our faces give it away
as we, my cousins and I, all notice
our fathers are gone now many a day,
following their lives with little remiss.
We search the party, crowded rooms and see
laughing kids, smiles we once wore long ago
before our dads started new families.
It gets better with time; the hurt does slow.
We leave it behind like they left their pain –
right away, so there’s not telling whether
it’s still there or it’s the numbness we train
ourselves to feel, yet there’s still that tether.
But we’ll know, when we become parents too,
to stay true and do things we thought you’d knew.
we are eating
the bún that
mom
spent the morning
cooking
at the dining
table
with one more black
chair
than we
need
or ever did
need.
What was it?
The bearing witness to
it, seeing it all fall
apart.
The new life, other foods, and different words.
The stresses of day after day that revealed how
you couldn’t be as strong as our Mothers.
* Originally submitted to Threads of Memory, an anthology of Southeast Asian poems, on March 16, 2010.
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