poems from because daughter is also mother

1.

Mother, what is the shape of me? Can you remember tomorrow? There is a hovering between skins. Molted is not a static state. There is still a secret living under the skin. Holding a dying fish in one hand, eating dried gwamegi (과메기) with the other. In a dream, I am slit open like a fish, cleaned and hung out to dry, the ocean air swirling around me so I don’t feel abandoned. To eat and be eaten at the same time. To dry, to gather, to be saved for later. To consume the gwamegi and to become the 과메기. When I turned 39, I felt suddenly most able to understand my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmothers. Though I am not a mother, I felt more resonance with mother than I ever had. This was grief lifted up through swirling saltwater. This was joy found through profound sadness found through precision cutting of fish. This was the burden of being a fish in a mother’s body in a daughter’s time in the ocean. This was han. This was reaching.

2.

Autumn pets me, the leaves patting the top of my head before they fall to the ground. I want to tell you about your mother. I have to tell you about a tree. But to tell you about my mother, I have to tell you what an elderly dog wearing a diaper taught me about life and death. Sometimes we only truly get to know someone after they are dead. The haunting doesn’t happen by itself. The haunting is a collaboration. When I say, I know you like I know myself, it is because I’ve already come back from death more times than you can count. Remember to change the water on the altar. The belly warmth: the light above me on the ceiling, trying to catch my attention. The bond of motherhood is a twisting in the gut, the language of knots. I thought I was contemplating the loss of my mother but it was just another ceremony where no human could go.