Prodigal

Because the scalpel was sharp, but our tongues

were sharper, and every morning, you were too far

gone. Ba, if you can hear me, nod once for yes,

twice for no, you are still not my son, and I will leave

you in that blue-veined gown, let the doctors disown

your hackneyed lungs. I want to hold your hand, Ba,

I really do, to glove it the way Ma taught me to:

in thyroid wings that circle the inside of your palm,

feeling every crease and tremor that got us through

tricycle wheels, East Coast Park, Sunday mornings, after

she passed. But do you remember how we scrubbed

those four walls clean with jade? How it wasn’t enough

to lymph the cancer from our bones? Or how evenings

were the taste of cane kissing my knees, that blunted

smoke trailing your lips? I watch these words ghost

into saline, trace each drip along the curve and flat

-line of your chest. My fingertips burn like firecracker

luck, like inconsolable hope, like a repentance we don’t even

have a dialect for. Like how I found you doubled over

in pain, pulling the white above your eyes for the doctors

to double your dose. So I strangle February by her nape,

sluice her blue moon into forgiveness I am learning

to water. I am here, Ba, because I am always disrobed

in grief. Because I am not your son, but I still wear

your surname like gospel. That repeating chorus,

that distending verse of skin. I will sing it holy

like a pulse, a sinus rhythm that tenors our days

with Amen. Ba, let me offer these hands like two

mandarins, up to God, and envelope your torso

in touch. I will listen to the altar of each prodigal

breath, recite your heartbeat as sermon, watch the sun

descend from bed to wheelchair and pray for you

to do the same.