my grandfather’s soul is a child

By Natasha Chiok (@ahsatanchiok)

your skin is as wrinkled and spotted as the pages of novels

that line your home, that you must have pored over in your youth.

i once saw you as wise and revered, like an old oak,

or a wise wizard and his ancient tomes.

you ought to age gracefully, sparkle golden.

nowadays, as you lie asleep, your skin looks milky

like a baby under your sun spots. your sprawl resembles

the groggy heaviness of thick tender tiny limbs,

arms over your head like a cherub’s halo, soul

exposed like your stomach to the ceiling.

when you wake, your eyes follow me, round,

empty seawater, like a newborn unfamiliar with the world.

every time i see you, you see me for the first time.

my visage was swept away into the whirlpool

beyond your eyes.

years ago, you hushed me so i wouldn’t cry.

you would smooth down every surface of the earth so

my blood would never flow. now, i reach for you as you

hobble, chase after you in case you try to escape, hope that

the world forgets so you will always remember.

your house is adorned with handmade paper lanterns,

crayon coloured rabbits for mid-autumn festival, red folded

fans hanging on doorways. my grandmother crows with

excitement, “yeye1 made this!”, but you do not seem happy.

and i don’t know whether to praise you or not.

i can only imagine your feeble hands, making

one crease of a paper fan after another. from those hands

used to flow strokes of chinese like water,

but you have forgotten how to write my name,

as your words form childish scrawl.

jing wen, that’s the name you gave me.

jing, as in the vibrancy of a jade,

wen, as in the white veins that run through it.

and though our memories stray so far, the strokes

of my name become tendrils linking me to you.

you see, the strength of jade lies in its toughness.

when you gave me this name, you carved into me

fortitude. and now i vow to be jade armour for your memories,

protecting you from the emptiness of forgetting

by giving you my own.

i’ll teach you to write my name as you once did for me,

i’ll teach you how to come back home, i’ll send you to daycare.

i’ll answer all the questions you’ve forgotten the answers to.

most of all, i’ll teach you how to remember

and i won’t cry when you forget.

—

yeye1: grandfather

Natasha Chiok is an aspiring teen writer who loves to dabble in poetry. If her life were a novel, its central theme would be love and how to find it. As a result, she taps on her life experiences to explore all the ways love can manifest in the world around her.