Illustration by Anne Le Guern

                                                                            a golden shovel

Daughter, I think you embellish what you don’t know. A bomb
is nothing like a slammed door. That
is your poetic imagination. Have you seen a tree
line disappear into flames? That’s what a bomb can do. I taught you, line
by line, my own poetry. It was a song back
when I went hungry. Your grandmother died when I was about
ten. I became an orphan then. I made sure that you never went without a
meal. I taught you to count to one hundred
in Vietnamese. You played in backyards,
on swing sets, bright shards of grass at your feet. I tried to give
you the safety I never had. And now, you tell me
that you are afraid of me? You lock yourself in your room
and write my story. I’m here, waiting to
be acknowledged. Can you hear me breathe?

Cathy Linh Che
Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split (Alice James Books), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. She is working on a poetry manuscript, a creative nonfiction manuscript, and a short documentary, with director Christopher Radcliff, on her parents’ experiences as refugees who played extras on Apocalypse Now. Find her at cathylinhche.com and @cathylinhche.