The well of generational trauma
My parents drank from the well.
There was no baptism
or ceremony. Where I lived,
the poison was in the water.
I held my breath
as they dunked my head in,
told me to drink,
told me it would be good for me.
Our bloodline is tainted
because well-meaning elders
with loud voices and sharp hands,
never questioned
what they should have.
Grandma worries
about asbestos under the plaster,
when the poison is in our veins.
The poem you just read was a finalist at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival.
“How are you?” my great-aunt asks, pouring tea from a big clay pot.
She looks at me with curiosity; a wall of dim sum steamers between us.
I want to tell her about the woman who broke my heart.
But I know “How are you?’’ means
“Tell me how you are in the least controversial way.”
Her chopsticks clink against her bowl, and I am reminded of how easily it could
shatter. My dad once told me not to be a bull in a china shop.
“Go delicately; watch where you step.”
A bull, a mantis, and a gay girl walk into an Asian restaurant
The Western part of me is screaming. I want to tear
through the table—turn it upside down with my
horns.
This is the part of me that wants chaos and blood.
The part I keep hidden.
My great-aunt pours us more tea, and I notice the watercolor stems on the pot—
how they’re as thin and papery as her veins.
If the bull is let loose, it would tear right through her.
Go delicately; watch where you step.
“How are you?” she asks. I rein in the bull, pat its grizzly head. Leaning into its
neck, I whisper, not every place is your battleground.
Here, I must move softly; an Asian mantis gliding through a china store.
“I’ve been stressed,” I say, without going into detail.
This is my way of being authentic while causing the
least pain.
The bull squirms in its seat. I picture it charging
across the restaurant—shards of glass in my lap,
bloodstains on the tablecloth.
In a rush of panic, I check on my aunt.
The bull sits quietly in a corner, breathing down her neck.
Not every place is your battleground…
And so, we lay our pieces across the table like carefully chosen mahjong tiles.
“This is the only way to make it work,” says Mantis, taking a bite of stir-fried cabbage.
“Can you truly connect without showing your full self?” asks the bull.
I don’t know.
But I’ve been doing it my whole life.
Suri was a finalist for the SBS Writers’ Competition (above), and a winner of Moleskine’s True Colors Contest (below).
Mount Fuji isn’t lilac up close
Take me back to Fuji,
to that deserted motel
with the rusty pink boats.
To that first rainy night –
wet socks and honey chips.
The stillness of the world.
I asked you why Fuji glowed lilac
from a distance, when up close,
it’s dull and gray.
You say something about
light refractions. I say,
‘‘All the postcards were lying.’’
Maybe Fuji was a metaphor
for the future –
so enticing from afar.
So full of hope and mysticism,
when you’re sitting on tatami mats
in the warmth, sipping tea.
I wish I could crystallize that moment.
Freeze-dry and hang it above my bed.
At least I’ll know there’s a place
where things felt simple –
where the only thing we ran
from was the rain.
My mind still goes back to Fuji,
to that night in the motel
with the chips and tatami mats.
And us,
frozen like a postcard,
shimmering
and so far away.
The upcoming poem won 3rd prize for Hammond House’s International Literary Contest.
My parents’ house
My parents’ house is a time capsule
buried deep underground.
The furniture is intact;
my sling bag, a preserved fossil,
exactly where I left it.
At first glance, it looks like
time cannot touch anything here.
Then I notice spots where
the light got in:
new lines on my parents’ faces,
Grandma’s protruding veins.
It’s as if time seeped in
through the gaps and cracked them
at half the speed –
which is to say, my parents’ house
is also a time machine.
My family sits in the living room,
flipping through memories
that aren’t mine.
Leaving home is taking
rusty kitchen scissors
and cutting your own face
out of the photo albums.
‘‘There’s still time to make more,’’
says my aunt, placing a hand on my
shoulder. She calls me by the name
I buried in the backyard at eighteen.
There are some things time cannot touch.
My parents’ house is a time capsule
and a time machine.
The road that takes me away
carves a new one down my
mother’s face.
Her wrinkles run together
as she scrunches her nose –
a map of all the places
she’s been without me.
vThe house calls out from the rear window.
It sits unchanging at the end of the road
till distance swallows it –
a time capsule buried into the horizon.
At first glance, it looks like
time cannot touch anything here.
But it can,
and it does.
What doesn’t kill you, makes you softer
When a vase breaks in Japan, it’s glued back together with powdered gold – as if to say, trauma rips you apart, then reassembles you more beautiful.
It’s strange how we thank trauma for our strength – as if something good must always come out of suffering, as if being alive isn’t an achievement in itself.
Once, at the grocery store, I saw an egg carton that said, ‘‘A little damaged, but still good.’’
I am not better or more beautiful than I was before the trauma. But at my raw, squishy center, I am still good.
When life cracked me open, it didn’t make me stronger. It made me softer, messier. It made me leak all over the breakfast table.
A well-meaning loved one says, ‘‘You are better because of it.’’ I tell them, ‘‘Not everything has to be beautiful.’’
Mount Everest shrunk sixty centimeters after the big quake – 600 years of growth, destroyed in a moment.
If something so grand can be struck down by life, what is to become of my small human body?
Why does something good have to emerge from the rubble? Isn’t it enough to have emerged at all?
I picture her as a
flower tree
When my great-aunt died,
the bougainvillea tree
outside her house
bloomed for the first time
in years.
We’d never seen
so many white flowers.
My dad said she was sending
a message. I shrug,
not quite sure I believe in
the great beyond.
But I like seeing her as
something alive,
something growing.
I picture her as the tree –
leaves outstretched,
green.
And I think,
if she is the tree,
she is also the soil
nourishing its roots.
She is the ants,
and the early morning dew.
If she is the tree,
she is also the birds,
the stray twigs,
the wind under their wings.
She is the soft, vapory clouds.
She is the sky itself.
She is the rich, throbbing
fullness of the human experience,
and also, nothing at all.
She is love
and suffering
and pain
and loss
and beauty.
She is the whole world.
She is her small house
in her small town.
She is her favorite dried plums,
a gold bangle on her dresser,
a pot of rice,
a bougainvillea tree,
this poem.
Curious
about Suri?
Learn more here.
