The older I grow, the more I know that

Words truly are futile,

As there is so much I want to show you,

And so much I want to tell you.

 

I’d show you my mind’s moving pictures

Before I sleep, and in dreams.

You, my sister, and some other medical resident’s child you babysat for

Extra cash.

I came home in my jumper in a car seat,

Craning my neck from the back of Grandpa’s sedan,

I saw the three of you,

Swathed in sunlight,

With tiny hands in a ring

Circling around and around the front yard.

The babies couldn’t even form sentences.

Their parents came home after dark.

 

When my best friend came over to play let’s pretend,

And you crept up the stairs to listen,

And to tell us to

Wash our hands for the tenth time,

I made a noise and then told her wryly,

“She doesn’t understand.”

And so, we continued playing with

Dirty hands.

 

You looked at me in a way that sits in

The recesses of my memory.

You knew what I meant.

You understood

But you couldn’t speak.

 

I wish you could have read me

When you found me crying at 13

A week before high school

About nothing at all.

And everything at the same time.

You told me,

“Shake it off like a duck.”

Those words didn’t work back then.

But I wonder if they worked for you

When you needed them.

 

At parties I don’t remember,

In the midst of sweaty bodies and foul shots and fruity vapors,

How disgustingly alive I felt for the first time.

Even if it was all fake,

I wish you could have been there to

Hear the floorboards shake.

 

I studied biology and anatomy, and

I wrote and wrote and wrote about a hundred

Red boiling soups on the stove, that stunk of home.

They greeted me on cold December evenings.

I can’t tell you how they tasted,

But I remember what they smelled like.

Japanese curry twice a week, just because I liked it

And nobody else did.

 

You made me write in diaries you bought me.

Eyes rolled up, I wrote

Letters to your own mother who went down

Long enough ago that all I can recall is the feeling

Of my finger when she shut it in the door.

And apologized with a smile

As you laughed and laughed.

First, second, third, and fourth

Generations of laughter and tears

About nothing and everything.

 

You left those letters on her grave.

You taught me what ovarian cancer was.

Without knowing how to say the word, “ovary.”

 

I was once told that as children,

You and your little brother were shy.

You hid under your blankets

When strangers came over.

I know how that felt,

But I also don’t know so much

About you and what you felt.

Do you and did you feel

Regret?

 

When your childhood home went up in flames,

When your father’s spirit left

And your mother’s body wept.

When your husband saved you,

He brought you home

And then made the ceilings shake.

I imagine little boys and girls might have made faces

When you ambled by on American streets.

When your first son first cried

And your second son first lied,

What your hammer toes feel like walking

In shoes that have known

Two countries,

One and a half languages,

A black and white wedding aisle and cotton factories,

And the suburban concrete outside your tiny little house.

 

I wish words could mean

More than they do with you.

There is so much I’m yearning to speak about:

The ones who claimed to love me,

The books that saved me,

The songs that carried me,

And the memories that haunt me.

 

There is so much you’ll never understand.

Just like I’ll never comprehend what it’s like to

Be you.