Letter to 外公 (or, Wàigōng, or My Mother’s Father)

by Misha Ponnuraju

 

1.

I want to describe for you
the echoing yawn of an open cave
how the cliff is cut open by time and water1
until it is wide enough for me to enter its jaws
and behold the forest.2

I want to describe for you the stone I want to become —
the sloped boulder, dressed by moss, bright and slimy,
the cascade of fern, the thin baby hemlock tree.
I want to describe to you
the incredulity of life sprouting from silence,
this green riot, this verdant anomaly.3

2.

In the heavy moments before we would relent
to our snoring and nightmares, your daughter
would prompt my singing. “Rock of Ages”
beneath a painting of Christ,4 colors dimmed over time
by the daily beatings of morning light.

Our voices, bare and untrained and in melody,
would become one. This dark place of
our garish song glimmers
with the murky sheen of broken love.

3.

How did you learn to sing?

4.

Did you know that your daughter still misses you?
Your haunting feels like a cool, hard rock beneath my hands —
the boulders in Joshua Tree I would climb,
the micro-sharp pain pricking my fingertips.

5.

I fear losing the melody of your laughter in my writing.
I fear that I color you a villain, singular and complete in your violence.
I fear that in softening you, I dishonor the women you beat bloody,
the homes you have set ablaze with your smoke.

6.

I wish I could know how
you created a songbird of your body5
the bright cerulean blue on your eyelids,
electrified irises as you moved into the spotlight,6
brightened above the dark cave of a mouth caught
in song of peony pavilions and red chambers.
I wish I could lift my voice like yours
hit the high notes without breaking.7

 

 

1Do not mistake this as the cruelty of plunging into an open wound.
2Midwest, not Malaysia, not searing tropical wind, not wild orchid roping up the velvet pandan leaves.
3Did you ever imagine having a granddaughter? How do you say 外孫女?
4I want to know what colors fill the bodies of gods you worshipped, and you will never be able to tell me.
5Studies show that opera singers have descended from early species of angels.
6The fact that you were an opera singer makes me insane with delight.
7Did you ever teach my mother to sing? Would you have taught me?

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