When you were ten, you murdered your own mother.

Swallowed your native tongue to make room

for a whiter mouth. A softer accent. Your father

cursed at you in a language that was no longer yours,

emphasizing the knuckled punch of every syllable --

huài dàn. You asked him what that word meant,

and he shook his head as if he no longer recognized

his own son. Stupid boy. You laughed,

stared mockingly at the kerosene in his eyes—

twin fires that you, a careless arsonist,

had set alight. And now, sitting by your

grandfather’s deathbed, his hands folded

like crumpled origami over your smooth palms,

you find the words you do not know how to say

choking your throat like the tubes

hooked to your grandfather’s paper-thin skin.

You watch like a foreigner within your own family

as your grandmother cries into the hospital sheets

while her husband fades slowly into past tense.

And you might not have known what huài dàn meant

when it exited your father’s lips like a bullet wound

all those years ago, but as your mouth

glues itself closed

with the bones of a language

you had slaughtered, unable to form the word

sorry or I miss him too,

you know what it means now.