grandfather clock

on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; you sat there with me, almost, the ghost of a downturned hand tapping slow and steady on your knee. i watched my sister poke at airplane food as you recounted the famines etched in your gut, the ghost of your river mush mixture sloshing around in her emesis bag.

on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; grasping at the passing years, the white of your knuckles bleeding into your hair. you wear clothes washed by a machine decades old, break bread out of an aluminum bowl, watch time run dry on a year-old desk calendar. you’d drawn on the right month in red marker the next time i saw it; i wonder if putting numbers on time matters more or less when you know you’re running out.

on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; to watch skyscrapers burst from the land you love and old customs turn to impersonal plastic. half the grave you used to frequent sits empty and unlabeled, waiting for you year by year. did it hurt to face your own impermanence as you lit incense at the proof of hers?

i let a life engulf me as your daughter watched from the shore, but you stood on another side of the ocean. it’d take so long to know you the way i’d like; years of dinner table conversations and turtle-paced walks that we just don’t have the time for. sometimes i wonder if i watch you so closely because i know more sharply that i won’t be able to for long. you take your lunches slow and sugarless, place your life in a box, assemble your bedsheets like a puzzle. i piece you together as you rearrange the blankets, craft stories and fading photos into a mind and a heart; you build yourself a place to lie down as i build a boat out of your histories. when it is strong enough,

i’ll sail across our ocean again