All the time I don’t know what I’ve lost.
I overdraft my bank account.
I can’t find the glasses on my head.
I laugh at my great-grandmother’s funeral
waiting for the incense to wake her.
I don’t remember what I said
when I came out. I don’t remember
much about it, actually, just that there was a
documentary on helicopters
running in the background.
The sputter of engine murmuring
shshsh as if trying to silence itself.
Sounds like thank you in Mandarin:
xiéxié if the fog slumbers. My great-
grandmother dies in July, politely
Ohioan in the way she’s forgotten.
I wonder what she would say. She has
ferried dynasty into a prairie of
nowhere before dying with her throat
ripped out. I can’t bid farewell at the funeral
so I thank her instead, laughing because
these are the only words I know. Here I am,
wondering if loss is more an immigrant
than a heritage.
