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A Visitor
For Lih's mother
Shuffling between kitchen and living room,
she carries trays of sliced mangoes,
salted rice patties, and red bean sweets,
a crown of utility carefully balanced
over tragedy's swiveling door.
She opens the paper wrappings,
hands delicate as a crocus unfolding
in the morning light. Little hands working
to part the frail chapter of circumstance
where histories float like clouds on an untouchable scrim.
A husband long dead and children long grown,
she hums now in perpetual migration
strummed by memories quiet as dusk-
notes plucked from hills overgrown with simple reasons
prying her open as stars from distant galaxies
pierce the silent circumference of night.
How roots cling to raked earth
and a culture slides down a mountain
into the heart-shaped contours of her lips
settling there in soft syllables
that ripen in her smile like tomatoes
in the scalding Taiwanese sun.
She courts her years, still a child playing dress-up,
desire toted like a feather hat or an afterthought;
a parasol sprouts from the tiny bulb of her hand,
and her eyes follow with unintended curiosity
as the palm leaves flap their giant
destinies in the window.
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