Go Forget Your Father

by Cathy Linh Che

Because the birds sculpted

the air with their song — 

I sent that flash across the sea.

Candle in a paper lantern,

the flame rose and dipped.

  

•

I’ve been hiding

from my father.

Fog-damp pall over the city.

I ink this bruise onto paper.

Years ago, in Highland Park,

we’d picnic in the backyard.

We slept in the living room.

I clung to my beautiful mother.

Flipped the pillow and pressed

against its coolness.

I held grudges like tiny fists of sand,

then, let go.

I kissed the fog and sky

and the ocean’s cobalt hue.

You. I hadn’t yet met you.

 

•

Murky alphabet — 

I falter the letter, I elide the gaps.

If the opalescent dew meant anything,

it meant that one day

I’d be lifted above my feelings.

You’d become less than a feeling,

the way every lover I’ve known

no longer hurts me.

Those old charges detonated.

 

•

Here and now, I make room for joy.

Birds ribbon the air with their singing.

Bird voices riot up. The planes

with their hulking engines — 

they fly too. The jags of each cliff head — 

Your lips — I uninterrupt.

I charley horse and miracle ride

your absence. The whipped froth of the ocean.

Puddle of salt water, shivering wound.

Seaweed, we sing of losses.

Cold under this blanket, I wait

for my alarm to sing.

 

•

I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife.

I’m hardened as a hunter ornamenting his cave

with the bones of the dead. I’m so sick

of history dragging behind me.

Today, I don’t want to be sad. But my father

has retreated into silence and the lashes

across his back have not healed,

and my mother tells me he could have killed

himself that night and we’d be blamed.

Call the police, she said.

We stood barefoot on the street, listening

to him throw things

against the garage walls, detonations

of only what we could imagine.

I hurl stones into the ether.

I wash my hands in ink.

The lost in the fog body borne of matter,

history-less, untethered.

Better to be alive and bewildered.

At least I can name the thing.

To love my father

is to love his wounds.

In times like these, we present our hurts

like old toys we polish up

to show each other

who we used to be.