朱美 ー vermillion beauty
after my newborn niece, and mostly for me
i .
your mother wants to follow you
the night before you’re born,
a string of learned children
snaking up a verdant mountain
us three siblings, we’re sweet again
just this one time, just for you
back in our childhood shoes
three heads of a soft bellied serpent
weaving again as we used to (our limbs)
before harm, or remembrance of harm,
or disclosure
we’re bridging silences just
to greet you, just to find you, you
among backpacked children, racing
toward the top, grunting at sun, guiding us
to the source of all water.
i’m in my little brother’s footsteps, he’s faster than me
doesn’t know he hates me yet, doesn’t know he loves me
doesn’t know how much both, together, shakes you
dissolves your edges, encases you in fury, rocks
you into acquiescence, confuses time for
absolution—
will the silences
unbridge us one day
and all too soon?
ii.
vermillion beauty, a secret name only i sing
in quiet, all night burning low on the altar,
resurrecting a promise, becoming the prayer
so i need not lose sleep to pray it
all night i’m stitching stifled love into cloth
for your mother’s belly, even though
her root did not yawn open, even
though they chose to pluck you
for your insistence on standing,
you chose your time
you inverted melody,
you broad-faced rider—
in the saddle of your season,
you chose
iii.
vermillion beauty
your name is a cloth i picked up just yesterday
for $6 dollars a pound
a color i wore to hammer my grief into form
when i myself insisted on a blood
worthy of celebration
vermillion are the stories i keep alive
in the den beneath the clamor of temporary mansions,
your great great grandmother’s fingers
wielding the glint of a needle,
your great grandfather’s
dolphins, weaving
water and light
poetry’s the only sound who can hear me now
so i’m poring over its caverns
waiting for the voice
that boomerangs
a cauldron of bats
flickering membranes
wingspans gathering shadow
family escapes me but i follow you vermillion one,
preparing for you though you’re already here
coated in vernix and i’ve run out of time
iv.
i love you and i don’t know love yet—
can we meet in the time beyond time?
in a realm after family, and before conquest?
your life has already slowed me
to the pace of the oldest wound
developmental arrest, the moment
i froze and kept walking, reaching
for the next sunlight, thinking
i was growing older
all the babies are grown now
except you vermillion
and sometimes me—
the first of your season
the second of your flock
the inflection of sunrise in blood
the strength of your birthtime
a life among lifetimes,
some dead,
some forgotten,
all humming
v.
vermillion and i are always chasing, around
a bend, up an island, vermillion a sound
ringing in my ear, not green but lush,
a procession of memory
the hue of life
insisting
insisting
vermillion
“imagine being twelve and teaching yourself to love these people unconditionally even though they never loved you the way they were taught to do. imagine that and like me you’d never want her to internalize other people’s ideals. like me you’d love her the way you’ve been taught to. because maybe she’ll need you to. that pit at the center was as hard and glimmering as a crystal ball, not grey hair, not dirt, not copper wire, not dead bugs. perhaps she fears bitterness within her, but most of the time i can see none. not grey hair not dirt, but only crystal and only crystal, crusty, sweet and clear.”
- ancestor, a friend i loved, then feared, then missed — lan anh le