My grandmother learnt

the best way to muzzle tragedy

was to speak only in her mother tongue.

 

Rěn nài was a word she liked to use

meaning ‘to wait’ and ‘to receive’

You had to embrace pain, even if it meant satiating hunger with air.

 

When the world war tore apart what was peace,

she was eight, shopping with her mother.

The sirens never rang—

 

But when she stared into the aperture

of her mother’s scream,

it was the only sound she heard

 

Over&           Over &                     Over

sharper than flashing animal teeth,

gunshots and grenade, before her anguish stilled to a portrait.

 

Qiáng zhuàng was what her mother taught her

to become alveolo-palatal,

petaled: defiant like flower in a drought

even as the Japanese tempested through villages,

leaving only a wake of gasping mouths to feed;

even as flames of fury frothed the skies,

even as coppered bayonets rained down in squalls,

the biblical wrath of an unseen god.

*

When rén appeared again,

he was a man,

Once, stranger turned husband turned father.

 

Now, wilting in hospital sheets because

the war never left

but raged silently in his liver instead.

 

Qiāng means gun, cancer means bullets

emptying a body.

A body can only be entered so many times

before a chuāng opens up

and life escapes, sighing.

 

Liver in Chinese is always paired with bǎo bèi,

    his cold, foreign fingers entwined with hers,

mother tongue forgotten.

 

I clasp my grandmother’s other hand,

   letting the warmth of her touch seep

into my bloodstream

 

Glossary:

Qiáng zhuàng: Being strong

Chuāng: Window

Rěn nài: Endure