I am calling up the dead\u2014the dead of my family.
\nI pull them out of the earth by their hair, by the fistful.
\nI scrutinize their bodies, green as acid, for traces of mine.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
How can I stop looking at them?
\nAt their faces?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Their bones strung together
\nare the beads of a necklace
\nI wind around my neck.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Their lives pour into me through a silver faucet
\nI cannot turn off. Their deaths, too\u2014<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
suicide, suicide:
\nthe familial sickness.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Surely it has congealed within me,
\nall their awful particles.
\nSurely I have been marked.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If I were the firstborn, mystical or clean
\nlike a sheet of cotton twisting in the wind\u2014<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I am a piece of slate stained,
\nscarred with footprints of the dead.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Are they confessing what they\u2019ve done
\nto make me?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They lay their hands on me
\nlike strips of seaweed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I place my mouth at my feet,
\nunable to speak,
\nI feel their malformed sadness run through my hair like a comb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am calling up the dead\u2014the dead of my family…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":498,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[206,223,224],"class_list":["post-497","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry","tag-family","tag-suicide","tag-wendy-chen"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n