she signed each letter. I carried them with me,
never imagining one day she would be never,
be dream, be archive, be Ziploc full of ash
in a Styrofoam urn. Careful, she carried so little:
the mother who left her, the stepmother
who kept her, a cardigan bright as a cardinal,
nearly four years in a prison camp fenced by pines
whose ragged canopies tore at the sky.
From her I learned to scull diagonally
across precarious water, to write longhand
a handful of words—mizu, obāsan, sumimasen—
an artful way to arrange carnations in a glass.
Have I been careless with the past? How can we caretake
what remains? A closet stockpiled with sardines.
Silver coins squirreled in drawers. A picture of her
at New Year’s looking both delighted and sad.
For her, to care was to never be a bother.
To cake concealer over jaundice. To conceal the water
pooling under skin. I caressed her forehead
before they carried her away.