postscripts from the mountaintop where i lost you

p.s. in any case, i imagine you right here with me—

and i can’t know how long we will stay walking 

and how long we will feed ourselves on sun warmth alone

and me on the vapor of you right here(right now

and without any time passed in your lack)with me

in the shape of baba’s empty stare through blackened trees

and pre-wake morning through clouds

p.s. night on this path is not lonely, not as much as i thought

you would hate to be without me and mama and

you would climb cliffs, to remember how uncles 

clapped palms over your back and told you eat bitter,

but i was never as good a daughter as you and her, and i could never stomach

as much as you, so maybe that’s why this doesn’t taste so bad

p.s. all the way to jiangxi, where baba knew a friend of a friend who owed him,

i was thinking of the last time we talked and if it felt mean

i know you’re away but when i look ahead to jiangxi

through the hills and troughs we carved out with years of play-chase

with you at my heels and my labyrinth braids just out of reach

and the forests baba took us to for those wild mushrooms

i see you, ahead, you’re just in jiangxi

p.s. please know that i would never have chosen to leave

hunan, and the peach blossom spring we passed on our way up and

lost you in that gunfire smoke and acidic fog(the

same peach blossom spring you used to dream

and tell me legends about)

but even though it was really them, not us

i’m sorry, i wanted to live so much life for you to see

p.s. i found mama out on the path’s ledge when we were resting

tracing the slow wind of the spring(uninterrupted and heavenly still)with her eyes

the syllable ma shaping her lips in a sound like a bubble popping

(see? she always loved you)but don’t worry,

we’ll be down the mountain by tomorrow

p.s. it’s not painful but it is nothing, and a portal to nowhere i can’t close up yet

and brine pools still and alone at the bottom of the ocean

and distance the length of lifetimes

guilt the height of a cliff(i’m so 

sorry for the growing-up i know you were 

waiting to see)and endless borderless quiet

p.s. but i hope you escaped down the river  

and you followed that fisherman

and you found the grotto, the peach blossoms—

stay, so through the scent i’ll know how to find you again