Lake of the isles

Fotografia Olho de Gato

January 2021*

After my grandfather died

I waited for him to arrive

In Minneapolis. Daily

I walked across the water

Wearing my black armband

Sewn from scraps, ears trained for his voice.

Migration teaches death, deprives us

Of the language of the body,

Prepares us for other kinds of crossings,

The endless innovations of grief.

Forty-nine days, forty-nine nights—

I carried his name and a stick

Of incense to the island in the lake

And with fellow mourners watched

As it burned a hole in the ice.

He did not give a sign, but I imagined him

Traveling against the grain

Of the earth, declining time.

Spirit like wind, roughening

Whatever of ourselves we leave bare.

When he was alive, he and I

Rarely spoke. But his was a great

And courageous tenderness.

Now we are beyond the barriers

Of embodied speech, of nationhood.

Someday, I will join him there in the country

Of our collective future, knowing

That loneliness is just an ongoing

Relationship with time.

It is such a strange thing, to be

Continuous. In the weeks without snow,

What do the small creatures drink?

Anni Liu

“My grandfather died during the first winter of the pandemic. His was the first death of someone I loved. That winter, people everywhere experienced the impossibility of being with dying loved ones. No one knew how to mourn in absentia. 

Having been separated from him and the rest of my family for twenty-two years due to my immigration status, I had had practice. I turned to poetry. Poems can enact impossible journeys. So, even though I wasn’t able to see him or be with my family, I could mourn. Here, in this room I made for us to be together.”

Anni Liu