when she died, i might have been eating churros out of a white paper bag licking the cinnamon
sugar crumbs from my fingers and the corners of my cherry mouth, she called it
or i might have been sitting in front of our family computer listening to a song about
nightswimming or stolen hearts and aching to feel these things too
the thing is, i don’t know.
god forbid anything interrupt the forward march of My Bright Future
god forbid anything drown out my father’s retelling of our pilgrimage, the seeds of our origin
story as American as the megaphone solicitations of Mexico City’s junk vendors
“estufas, lavadoras, microndas…” (stoves, washing machines, microwaves)
when she died, she might have lay under a thin sheet in an overrun hospital sweating or shivering
browbeaten by a son with the gambling and the alcohol and the women or aching for the
daughter who left in an airplane one spring morning and never looked back
the thing is, i’ll never know.
god forbid anything tip fortune’s scales against my favor, my mother’s tut-tut while knocking on
our antique table, a penny glinting-heads-up in the crack of a sidewalk, two eagles tearing each
other apart midair
god forbid anything poison the fruit borne of generations nested in a Russian
doll of dreams
when she died, she might have reminded herself that to live is to suffer or asked herself, “is this
what a life is?,” as my grandfather with the crooked back and the disintegrating nerve cells held
her burning forehead and her cold hand
i spent four forgotten years with her
before i knew my mother before i knew what it was to have a mother
but the thing is, i was finally ready for harvest.
Lilian Caylee Wang won a writing contest as a five-year-old in Tennessee. Since then, she’s eaten countless PB&J sandwiches, created an anthology of the lives of San Francisco’s homeless, fallen in love with people and places, written essays about culture and food, and become a poet. Her work has been published in the Huffington Post, Whetstone Magazine, The Racket, sPARKLE & bLINK, and more. Currently, she works as a product designer and lives on the road with her partner and her puppy.
