Rest

You didn’t dwell on the spoon rest, cleaved in two
from when you threw it into the sink for washing.

Instead, it goes into the garbage without
remorse. For a moment you consider piecing

it back together, but you’re older now. More
practical. You mourn the painted ceramic,

the kitschy Dutch scene. A few years ago,
you may have heard your mother’s voice

masquerading as your own - stupid, wasteful, careless.
A tiny ax you hoard between the folds of your clothing.

When it becomes heavy, you dump it in a river
not your own. You used to turn her words over

and over like a magazine page, pigment
rubbing off onto your skin. Until one day

you heard yourself repeating to your therapist
the exact words your mother said on the phone -

It’s my fault. I should have known. Afterthought:
I should’ve been a different person - you realized

even some birds can mimic car alarms. Meaning,
Isn’t all time a vengeance? How you contort

your body to fit in a box you built by hand,
believing this is how things are. This is

how I am. When I broke the spoon rest,
it was silent. Later, sometimes things break.

Not, who can bear the cross my mother bore
and where does all the weight go?

-

En Route to Dallas

Always Christmas. Always chilly. Always still people in the hot tub. Always Summerfield Suites. Always bellhops with green polo uniforms. Always the suite with two conjoined rooms. Always the tiny toiletries we’d stash away. Always Full House marathons on a cable channel we didn’t have at home. Always breakfast and social hour in the dining room. Always going in my pink swimsuit, damp. Always trying to get soda from the soda machine. Always would let me have it because we were on vacation. Always asking the man in a suit behind the front desk for a volleyball. Always had to do it because my sister never wanted to ask. Always opening the door to you standing there with four chocolate-chip cookies from the lobby, wrapped in a napkin. Always saved the receipts for your expense reports. Always made sure it would seem like an amount of food for just one person. Always would say, they never care, they know it's Christmas. Always a long drive in a rental car with the blue cooler between the seats. Always eating home-cooked fried rice from a tupperware with plastic forks on the road. Always 1-35 south for 8 hours straight. Always fights with my sister. Always playing the license plate game after. Always the whole car laughing together. Never thought about wishing to sit in the backseat, mom in the front seat with her feet up on the dash again, always.

-

American Gifts

My mother comes from a family of city dwellers. 
Her sister’s calves are stronger than hers, from squatting 
above the makeshift toilet somewhere in rural China. 
Mao called it reeducation, my aunt called it bullshit. 
She had dreams of leaving China, but instead she waved 
goodbye to my mother as she boarded a plane to America. 

When my aunt came to visit, she was disappointed at how quiet it was. It was nothing like Shanghai. She complained how she couldn’t go to the fish market or the park for tai chi. But when she called her friends back home, she’d tell them how big our house was, how large our yard was. 

My mother fills my aunt’s suitcases with gifts 
from America. Eighty dollar Ralph Lauren Polos. 
Coach purses. Hundred-dollar skin cream. 
In the same week, she calculates her grocery bill
down to the dollar, before she gets to the register. 

Once, my mother mentioned going back to China and bringing my brother with her. I yelled at her. How could she uproot his life, place him in a foreign country? She never brought it up again. 

When I left home, I missed my mother’s rainbow
trout, her eight-treasure-rice cake, the one she makes
for Christmas. Does she still long for her mother’s food? 
Do her fingers ache from packing and repacking gifts?