Sometimes they come back to her in dreams
It’s two in the morning and she startles awake,
thinking it’s the dog or her son’s voice.
She feels a strange word working
on her tongue’s tip. Speaking it
into the darkness, making out its
corners, searching its shape in her
mouth though it grips her dry tongue
like cheesecloth. Knowing she’s used
it in some negotiation of a double-brained
home, she won’t ask her mother.
She wants to remember it herself.
Slowing her breath and listening closely,
she recalls their chatter in her numb brain,
the voices of women speaking fast and low.
They talk about the factory, about ungrateful
children, whispers and the ugly words
they hear from strangers as they pass by.
They talk about faraway homes
and the best way to cook rice noodles,
eventually naming every loss they know.
Lying beneath the blankets sown together
with a thousand tiny stitches, she feels them
comb through her long hair with their rough
fingers and suddenly remembers the word she’s after.
Hoon-jah.
Alone.
***
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