GRIEF Poem: Now I Fear My Father’s Death, by Yixuan Wang

My father’s twin brother died twice.
First in 1965, seven days after their births,
then in 2013 when their mother died.
Her body was held in a small coffin
like paper kept inside a printer.
Years of paralysis made her stomach
a drum and legs needles.
Her wrinkled skin tucked to bones,
a decayed pear.

I couldn’t think of anything else uglier
than her death that day, but my father
paced like a hungry hyena in the funeral home,
swearing that he saw his newborn twin brother.
My father tried to wake his mother
for answers—how did one die
and the other survive, go to school,
have a child.

Deep in the nights when he
drank again, he saw his brother
who demanded to switch lives. I joked
that I’d be more than glad
to have someone else be my dad.

Now seeing my father age, faster year by year,
reminds me of the last glance
at a wrinkled body and the smell of putrid flesh.
I remember my father’s face,
toward the flame, resembled lost fawns.

Author: poetryfest

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