Gumji
I never spoke Cantonese.
I knew the words for rice,
bath, homework, hurry, go, late;
for give, thanks, big and little brother;
for masturbation and porn and salt
(they’re all the same)
but I only mapped the shapes of their sounds.
I couldn’t produce them with my New Yorker tongue.
Damn, dad must have been the same
except reversed. Somehow, our babble worked.
But then, in parts, we grew apart.
I pretended to forget our code.
We didn’t talk, didn’t leave notes,
walked the same hallways in silence,
and soon, with college abroad,
I forgot his language whole hog.
These days, he’s lost it all.
We watch the news the 2 Saturdays
a month I visit. There are only bombs,
new strains of flu, angry parents
complaining about the sorry state of our schools.
He asks for the … …
I can see his hand form the mold,
his thumb jab at his palm for imaginary buttons.
“Remote?” I ask but really tell.
I wish I remember Cantonese
so I could say “gumji”;
that instead of giving him what he can’t find,
I could restore what once was there
but now is gone.
