Scavenger Hunt Where We See Our Ghosts and Run Toward Them
by Phoua Lee
Don’t forgive me, Dad.
If you want to know why I kissed that girl
under your motion-sensor porch light
we’ll start with
The night a deer hopped
in front of our truck
I looked back even when you
told us eyes forward. I wanted to know how /destruction/
might look like, how I might peel open when you
someday took a corkscrew to my body: body turning to pulsing
you: skinning my flesh into clothespinned blanket
making me deer corpse
Veins can stretch an approximate 100,000 miles
and I imagine you laying mine out on roadside
deciphering each secret encoded into blood vessel
When all else fails, take to the roadmap and pin my veins
as navigation route to where I hid my fingernails
under Jeffrey Pine roots in Coalinga
as tribute to your severed finger
Write our names beside each other Circle our last 3 letters
oua to make creator to do
You & I determiners of our own fate
You: survivor of the Secret War, orphan child
Me: daughter of war refugee, outcasted queer
The difference between prey and pursuer
is the distance between them and
what makes a /survivor/ is what was left behind
motherland, rice paddies, cicada tymbal music
Yog li no
so the pursuer is behind us
so the pursuer becomes a part of us
You & I contained by our traumas
That deer on the road: both of us
Travel by car or foot 3 miles down the same road
the area where I saw the man
in the field silver and shivering
like a glitch in reality
more a hesitant silhouette than a human
He’s us: our ghost: our residue
Have you found him yet. Have you found him.
Or are you still holding the gun to your temple
like the liquor-green night I found you
your feet plastered on carpet doing nothing to ground you
your finger balancing gravity against trigger
Mloog kuv cov lus. Can you see my hesitant silhouette
This means I am beside you. This means
our heartbeats will sync
soon. This means you are alive.
This means you are staying.
Veins can stretch an approximate 100,000 miles
enough for us to cocoon ourselves into
another tomorrow
Put the gun down, Dad. Lock it away.
You once told me holes were evidence something
had suffered someone’s rage
You couldn’t be a sieve because you were afraid
your children would slip through like egg yolk
when you carried us on your shoulders
Because you were careful knowing one hole in the fabric
could manifest a weak spot for a larger tear
could cause it to be discarded.