Tan Lixin (b. 1993)

SELECTED POEMS

On The First Day Of The Wake

When my mother became an orphan,
I expected grief and it did not come.
I wanted a heaviness, to sit and watch it
pass, even if slowly. But at the wake,

I realise I am empty, because sadness
already settled somewhere else, found
its place in a portrait of Ah Ma’s younger
self, smiling lightly, lucid, knowing

that she had died 20 years later without
her memories. Or that I had not known
her name in all my life until it fell from
the lips of a chanting Buddhist monk.

Or that her foreign helper is relieved
of Ah Ma’s shell but cries as if she knew her
alive, unable to join ranks because
she is not family. This sadness clings on

to the candles we must keep alight
for Ah Ma to find her way, and lingers
under the laughter of her children.
Her firstborn repays her with poor eyes

that guide precise fingers over the clean
edges of paper sycee. The others learn,
kneading and rolling paper money, earnest,
watery-eyed, working to fill 30 bags so

Ah Ma can buy happiness in the afterlife.
Her second born toddles to her portrait, pausing,
his balding head resting atop a back hunched
with age, and I wonder how long it would be

before he sees her again, if there is more time
for goodbyes. My mother does not flinch
at the sight of Ah Ma, the same stoic teenager
who had gone home to her with a broken heart.

My mother never asked for help, and refuses
my help as she lights a new candle, a gentle
flame lapping at her hands, wax breaking
and dripping, hardening and healing itself.

by Tan Lixin
first published in Trampoline (Issue 9)

 

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