river, breath, question

1st Place Winner of the Poetry Contest: river, breath, question - Ruisi He

1.  河 (hé) - river i dream of grandpa's face but it comes in fragments- bits of features that don't
quite fit together, like a river breaking over stones mom says he had my eyes, or
maybe i had his, but in photos he's always looking away.              (i think. we didn’t
take many photos together. i didn’t look. i didn’t ask.) grandfather's hometown
sat beside a river
             (河. a simple word that even i know)
but whose real name i cannot pronounce,
though dad says it flows through our blood. in
his casket, his hands rest like tributaries, blue
veins branching beneath paper skin.
i wonder if that nameless river remembers him,
while i stand here forgetting everything but
the stink of the hospital the way he smelled
like oolong and menthols, thick like the
silence between us, thick as the smoke that
eventually killed him.
what kind of granddaughter forgets her
own yeye's birthday?
              (a granddaughter like me, it seems)
  
2.  呵 (hē) - to scold, to exhaleduring the funeral, an auntie wails with an intensity that
makes me shrink into my black dress.
              (i don’t know who that auntie is. when she comes to greet me, i pretend i do)
their sharp intakes of breath, grief
              (inhale. exhale. 呵，呵，呵)
becomes scolding, pours out like a language i
never learned to speak.

i force tears because everyone else is crying,
because mom's shoulders are shaking,
because dad who never cries has red eyes
because it feels wrong to be dry-eyed when
they're laying to rest someone who helped
create half of who i am— even if that half
feels hollow, even if i can barely write his
​name.
             (i can’t even read his funeral tablets. the characters on his grave)
  
3.  何 (hé) - what, whyin the temple, i cover my face with my hands,
mouthing silent whys pretending to
pray but really hiding from all the
things i should have asked: what was
your village like? did you miss the old
china?
            (did you know i would grow up           unable to read
your last letter?) the incense burns and burns, enduring longer
than my performative grief. i catch my little sister’s eye—she
doesn't speak chinese either— and we share a look of mutual
shame, american girls playing dress-up in our ancestors' sorrow.
whisper his name again: He 
              (i have his surname. 何）
i repeat it silently, willing it to stick this
time, knowing it won't.