i wasn't raised for religion. every wednesday, i fell asleep during chapel
but without fail i woke up when the lights dimmed for the benediction.
our chaplain’s favorite poem was wild geese by mary oliver.
my favorite wake-up-call. i have always loved birds.
the last time my grandparents visited here with me,
i was almost too young to remember that my 姥姥 always held me tightly
in her warm right hand. i still remember her black-walnut-stained fingertips,
her long thumbnails, the way she walked me, slowly, to the cornfield
to watch the migrating geese land and peck together at purple ears of corn.
look, 宁宁, she said. a family. family stays together.
when my 姥爷 and her flew back home to china, the geese left for home too.
i wondered why they were all leaving me behind.
mary oliver says you do not have to be good
but i know to remember that if you scream and sob loud enough in the field
you will scare the wild geese away.
now, years later, when i visit them,
i feel disconnected. 外国人. i think about the life i could've lived
if we'd never left china: if we stayed, safe among the flock.
but although we may look the same,
i am now an ugly duckling stumbling over her words in a sea of well-spoken swans.
perhaps i have a place in the family of things, but when
the strings that tie you to your family have lengthened across the atlantic,
slackening with every missed call and milestone slipped quietly past,
it is so easy to feel alone. a bird with no place in the v-formation.
how much of love is purely proximity?
this fall marked the seventh there and back of the geese without my 姥姥
next to me, quietly watching. alone in the cornfield, i am a flightless bird
calling out into the far-away fog for an answer.
in the morning air, the geese cry out to the places they know their wings will never reach.
i too am sending a message to sea,
left on the answering machine among the breeze and salt,
hoping she'll call back— love, love, love.
Hanning Yan is a writer, STEM scholar, and a member of three singing groups. She prefers a cold Celsius to a cappuccino but will never say no to an iced matcha latte. Her poetry has been submitted to her school’s magazine, The Green Ponderer, and recognized nationally with a Gold Medal by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She aspires to be a brilliant college professor and has also always wanted to learn how to line dance, but the order in which she accomplishes these things is still to be determined.
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