Diem Perdidi

Inspired by Julie Otosuka's short story, which I read for the first time today and was tremendously moved.


I was in fifth grade
when I learned what
it was to forget

that my grandmother would
sometimes misplace her keys
or lose herself completely
in the space between thoughts

She once drove a car
into the side of
their motorhome when the
space completely seized her

my grandfather screamed for
her to stop but
she wasn't present to

hear him yelling her
name at the top
of his lungs, "Whoa
Tei! Stop, Tei, stop!"

He raged at the
damage, the fear of
losing a woman he'd
loved for 40 years,

and at the space
that stole her a
little more every day

a forgetting that would
not stop or slow
but plowed into her
like she had that

Airstream and that seized
all of us when
she could no longer
remember any of our names

 ---
April PAD Day 21 - responding to another poem

Building a stable life

My grandpa died still broken-hearted from the betrayal he felt by his country. He was born in California, fought in WWII, and sent to the Midwest with the rest of the dirty Japs American had come to despise and fear. He met Grandma there, and they came back to California to make a pretty great future for themselves and their five kids. But he never forgot his time in those camps.


Grandma stroked my hair
as I lay in her lap,
running her fingers through
the thick black
courseness passed down
from our ancient samurai ancestors.

She smiled and gazed
off into the sky,
staring at some long-forgotten
landscape of her
youth, murmuring more
to herself than to me,
"It will all be OK, child."

She had seen the stables
of the camps, finely
dressed women corralled like
common livestock, chins
held high, stubborn
as mules clinging to their dignity.

"It will all be OK, child,"
her mama whispered
into her ear under the gaze of guards
who saw them as mere
animals cluttering the barren landscape,
forgetting their hearts still
beat with samurai blood.

--

April PAD Day 10 - future

Palm reading

I used to
hold your hand when we
crossed the street.

It was warm
and firm, unlike the bony
fingers I hold now.

April PAD Day 28 - shadorma

Grandma swore

Grandma swore a whole lot.
Mom and Dad did not.
She smoked and cussed and
the Little Me feared her
fierce, loud love.

She would offer them a drink.
And the ice would clink
as she recanted the faces and
places she'd loved
so fearlessly.

PAD #15 - profile