The Next Life
POETRY
by Lulu Liu
Mom says,
Maybe in the next life,
about absolutely everything.
As if this one is cast, already
a hardened resin of her choices.
She was, to me,
the picture of unlived life.
She could have been a dancer, once.
Instead, she paces the four corners
of her small, careful garden,
wearing trenches of worry,
with her long legs.
I grew expansive
in her comfortable shadow,
big-bellied
and proudly free
of my inheritance of coupons,
insomnia,
an aching regard for
spent cars and old furniture.
To be a parent, it seems,
is to have the patience
of a mountain. Snows fall.
Seasons turn—a slow
drip gathers into a torrent.
Nothing
is really different:
Mom
at the stove,
conducting her
kitchen orchestra.
Mom saying,
she’s full, as
I open my mouth to eat.
Lulu Liu grew up on the East Coast of the United States after moving from her birthplace in a rural part of western China. One theme that comes up in her writing is the texture of family ties when stretched thin across cultures and oceans. She currently lives between Arlington, Massachusetts, and Parsonsfield, Maine. Her work has appeared in the Technology Review, the Sacramento Bee, and Harvard’s Dudley Review, among other publications.
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