What If This Is All There Is
BY THIA 尔雅 BIAN
When my father was young he joined half
a revolution. He says it was because he was young and stupid
and believed that the years would be kind.
Whatever kind of belief it is that keeps us wanting
to be good – to be bigger than ourselves – kept him painting
shivering lines on dirt-streaked walls until the city
sang protest. And when his mother – my grandmother –
found out she sent him a letter saying his father – my grandfather –
had died. Just to bring him home. Just
to bring him home. He dropped everything & bought his ticket & sat
on the train for hours – the groaning wheels, the awful
jubilant sky – thinking he would never see
his father again. And when he came home there were three
places at the table.
The times when I am myself in this story I think
I would have stayed away. What I mean is that lately
I have been trying to love the world and everything in it: the lonely
crosswalks, the beautiful dying rivers. I think that this done right could be
a kind of absolution. There is, these days, a wrongness in me peach-
soft, the overripeness of a baby’s skull. A soft spot
for something violent and gentle. There are so many things I have done
that saved no one and yet still are. I want so badly for there to be
another seat at the table, room for something other
than a haunting. In this dream the joints of my fingers bend far
enough back that nothing slips through. In this dream
I am open and loved and open and loving.
In this dream I am with my grandmother and she is holding
my hand and we wait together
for the train to come in.
How it Is
BY THIA 尔雅 BIAN
for Asa
Last summer near
my apartment there was a man
who sold goldfish
in small plastic bags
from the back of his bike. He would perch
cross-legged on the seat,
bright-voiced, sad-
eyed. He knew
their names
like his own. Each day
for months I walked
past him. I never saw him sell
a thing. Some days I wish
I had met you when we
were children. That we
had learned
the world together. That summer
it rained for weeks, so much
that the roads filled
to my ankles. The man
still sat bare-headed. Over
the fish, a clear raincoat. On
those days it took on the color
of the sky. Whenever I tell
the story of the man
and the fish
and their little plastic bags I
am always the man
and the fish
and their little plastic bags, all
these things loved
into their own languages. How there is
meaning
in that. These days the sky
is clear and you find
me stars and I put
them in my pockets, the old
worn-out ones with holes
where my thumbs have fretted
through. The next day they are
no longer there. You find them for me
again. I want to tell
you this is already
something, the two of us swimming
in our little circles in our little
plastic bags. The sky
above us, far
enough to reach.