the same year my mother stopped dyeing her hair was the same year my 婆 died. someone told me, get a tattoo somewhere you can’t see every day, behind your ear, down your shoulder, or just beyond the curve of your elbow. there’s no real pain, only a new permanence. the same year my hair started falling out in clumps. the leaves changing shades, their color fading. the same year i pulled this white strand from my hairbrush long dead like tugging out a seam. grief shocked the pigment from our pores, our silence impossible to summit. there was nothing anyone could say. the same year i came home from a year away to find 2 strangers sitting in my parents’ chairs. there were the garden tomatoes, watered, the boiler in the kitchen bubbling. but peering back at me: patchy memory, grey wrinkles. most days you forget what’s even there. i picture my 婆 and my mother too, both pairs of eyes tattooed along the lash line and along the bony ridge. hair still grows over where it’s always quietly grown, the tattooed eyebrow a permanent mountain. over the headrests, rows ahead, a stranger sways gently with the hum of the Chinatown bus. my dead grandmother’s crown over familiarly stooped shoulders appear out of nowhere. same patch of thinning meadow. sometimes i’m not convinced you can still love every day what you can’t see. i dry my hands in a rest stop and amidst the roar my palms become my 婆’s. open skin no balm can soothe. most days you won’t feel a thing. i dye and re-dye, forcing ink atop skein without promise.

_

________somewhere___ __ ____ ________________________________________ ____________________________________beyond ______________________________real pain,__ __a new permanence.
___this
___________silence impossible to summit.
_______________________________________nothing__ one could say.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ ___to__ _________________my parents _______________________________there
_______________________________________________peering back at me
_______________the_____line _________grows ______
___________________________________________________________ quiet
a_______mountain
___________________________o__n_____my__
___________________________________________________fami____ly s______________________________shoulders
_________a _____________meadow _ so
cardinals</_________ ____________________________________________still
___________________________________________no balm can soothe.
______________i dye__________________without promise.

beyond________________this________________summit

____there__________grows______a mountain______________meadow

______a balm________________________________________i________________promise.