one day i'll stop writing about my family
by Charlie Phama window to the sky is as a door to a street but i'm seven and don't understand analogies. i learn to
write my name ngoc: gem grit the heavy dot between my teeth grain of sand enclosed in shells
learn to write ha-noi: within river song hong: river red silt cracked open into a harvest now it just
drowns every other year each monsoon season seeps through walls drips from ceiling into tin
bucket a timer in our sleep father strikes his match over and over air to ash dragonflies at
eye-level once i caught a dragonfly between my fingers and it bit me and i ripped it apart shards of
wings glinting in the sun promises of flight a spine lay wasted
//
i draw my family on the back of drug prescriptions and washing machine instruction manuals
faces in wax ghosting over fine prints grandfather in sky blue phosphenes and jellyfish: there's a
jellyfish that reverses its aging process to cheat death father in white cigarette smoke chalky lungs
mother in red as in fire and fire doesn't leave a shadow it's source of light i am there too but
scribbled in pencil a silver afterthought shadow whittled from a wick my sisters small back-lit
figures because as women we sculpt ourselves in the spaces between other people daughter and
laughter one letter apart
//
a window to the sky is as a door to heat pickled skin cicadas that scream for a summer then die
their withered carcasses the ghost of july electric lines burnt onto concrete mother's insomnia
opening like wood ears in the dark an exit wound mistaken for an escape at six i ran away came
back for dinner on my way home i saw clouds purpled like fresh bruises a window to the sky a
sun split and spilling through a door to the river a gem on the bed a door to anywhere
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