Sincerely,

There would be entire tangerine afternoons

shrouded in your velvet shadow, we’d nap

the days into evenings

and only in the way a mother and daughter can.

Everything about you was a haven,

I remember talking back to you with my acrid

teenage tongue – your response was always with grace.

The day I realized this was the day I learned

about sacrifice, and the pieces of you

spread and given away like shrapnel,

and the thumb you lived under, and the life you’d

built that somehow turned around

only to smother you.

Now we are here, speaking not

connecting, your smile carries an hour

of expiration. The things you are willing

to say to me wear an air

of secrecy. Once we sat across from each other

at the beleaguered wooden dining table –

you watched me chew hand-pulled noodles,

braised pork belly, studied my jaw, my teeth,

the sinew, the bone. That’s how you knew

I had bitten into the soft of my cheek,

that this whole time, I’d been silently

in pain, preferring one side to the other.

On some mornings, I realize

it’s become difficult for me to conjure up

the terrain of your face. And I can’t help but wonder,

could you remember mine today?

Sincerely,

Molly Zhu is an attorney by day and a poet by night. Her poems are about gender, Chinese culture, family and the people she loves. She has been published in Hobart Pulp, the Ghost City Press, and Bodega Magazine, among others. In 2021, she was nominated for a Pushcart prize. She is the winner of the inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize hosted by the Cordella Press and her first chapbook will be published and available for purchase this year. to learn more you can visit mollyzhu.com.