Korean grandma - the darkness was deafening except the oscillating fan that felt so threatening

You grabbed the chain around my throat

In a fist

In your sleep

So to keep me from drifting away

I learned how to love from my grandma

In rituals—

red licorice and a black and white cookie hiding in Japanese enamel

ham and cheese sandwiches with apple juice from a glass bottle  

playing the Beatles and Frank

Aveeno and biting our toes

vanilla ice cream in a cone

giving change to strangers

and for some reason you told us to rub our finger under our nose when we washed our faces with soap

and you would only ever take baths

you would let us sleep in your bed while you wrote numbers on the pull out couch 

and you wouldn’t say much

and you would fan the sushi rice for hours

sour and speckled with sesame seeds

sitting on the smoothest wooden floor

she only knew how to take baths

I’ve never tasted any ice cream similar

how painful her life must have been

to lose her mom

and have babies with a play boy

who would marry some other girl

why did you hate your daughter?

there is something I don’t understand

it feels severed