For years I tried on different stories about my body
to use the body as a rinsing husk.
Language here is also a delicate peapod, a shell
that forms the world and its fantastic borders.
For years I ignored the sentence in my body.
Who came and who went—a blank ledger.
In this body is my mother’s body
who paid the fantastic price in
fairy tales written mostly by men.
I have my mother’s eyes and her teeth before they all fell out.
I have a rare ring size around my tongue and to some, this is monstrous.
She still speaks to me in Vietnamese, knowing that my
lessons stopped nine years ago, that nobody speaks it here.
But I can still say how are you, happy birthday, I love you.
This is a sufficient rind.
This is the only way I can say,
let’s find a way out of here
let’s take apart the woods
o
The discomfort I have with my whiteness resembles betrayal to the sentence in my body.
A short blade, an omission, a long tooth I can’t extract.
The second conditional clause sets a resting stone at the head of this longwinded route.
If I drank the wine, I wouldn’t sleep well,
so I never sleep.
My whiteness makes some people comfortable;
it provokes the most absurd confessions.
A lot of people would like to hold me still, confess.
Is there violence at the origin of each known word? I look up
hybrid and arrive again to my wakefulness; afraid.
The grammar of my body relies on certain conditionals.
o
If it had never—
If he hadn’t asked—
If the war wasn’t so—
If the body had refused—
If they hadn’t—
If there were fewer family members—
If she hadn’t wanted—
If he hadn’t fled—
If she could stay still.
o
My mother said when I was born, she was afraid.
Women born in the Year of the Tiger are fabled as
too much in their own story. They’re risk-takers in
this world, which typically spells feminine ruin.
She laughs often at her small monster, leaping again into dark.
She was also afraid of the fourth scar;
they said she’d be ripped apart between white walls.
This country is not for the faint-hearted; I will wear it.
This is the sentence in my body, decorated.
I cannot (not) take it off.
o
I am here because my mother settled a debt.
There was a conditional in her body.
There was a conditional in her father’s body in a body of water.
I am not frightened of risks,
but I am afraid of drowning.
I dreamed of it all year long before my son’s first howl.
My mother told me to name him twice to keep away bad spirits.
I named him thrice and kept him low; tried to avoid his face.
The typo on his birth certificate says gone
and with this, you looked satisfied.
I paced around trying to figure out how to put him back in line.
All night long my bristles stood on fantastic ends.
I meant to weep but could only growl.
You said nothing and brought back Panera to celebrate.
Free coffee, a punchcard, meal vouchers
white like paper, like my powerful calves.
Hmmmmm, yagga, yagga. All tongue and tooth.
How jagged I felt those few weeks out—my story gone rogue.
How without language we might finally be vanished,
touchless, free.
"On Passing" was originally published in Buffalo Girl (2023).
