A Letter Home

These paper walls

Someone had told me, was because Japan was prone

To earthquakes, and people had to deal

With shattering, the fall.

And how apt, I think now

These white sheets, the raised fibers

Like scars, the learned lessons.

The green of the tatami like leaves on the floor,

Except always fresh.

The whisper of sliding doors—

You remember. We couldn’t sleep once, Mang Jun going crazy, yelling at his TV. I knelt at the window to peek through the curtains but all I could see was a shifting blue light.

Our leaving like a sigh leaving

Our tired bodies before sleep.

Sometimes I dream about who lives now

In our old house. Here, spring to autumn

Everything is a-falling—

Sometimes I dream of how that light would flicker on his face, becoming green, yellow, blue. He is quiet then, in my dream, but the light shifts his expressions: pain, loneliness, the sigh, the anger.

Dead flowers, dead leaves.

Or how it could be empty

Light and shadow walking through its walls

All the silences between.

Those walls! I suddenly remember

The white-wash, the concrete cold and silent.

Those walls our country understands;

Sturdy like anything

That carries weight.