Sometimes I Wonder If Death Is All I Can Write About.

sometimes i wonder if death is all i can write about.

every poem i recite seems mournful, like i'm preparing for a funeral that i'm somehow sure will happen. it follows me, the death. its stench. the sorrow. it follows me and i'm so sick and tired of it. somedays i even think of stopping writing altogether, because what's the point? every word i put down on paper will be pitch black anyway and it will scream and weep of the same old tragedies that will make everyone's ears bleed time and time again.

but then i remember.

i remember writing about soft smiles and booming laughter. i remember writing about tears being wiped away by patient fingers, i remember writing the words, "i love you, i love you, i love you," like a hymn, a prayer, like a holy scripture. i remember writing about you. you, with your garden of water hyacinths, tiger lilies, and grins that are a little too sharp to make a person feel comfortable (just like mine). you with your poems that feel like a beating piece of your heart, with your messy hair, boundless excitement, and fingers painted with the rainbow. i remember us: sitting cross-legged in places we shouldn't be sitting in, talking about everything and nothing and feeling at home with each other ("you're my family"). i remember writing about adoration, love and friendship. i remember, then: death is not all i write about.

my writing is not about death or sorrow at all, actually. my writing is a sweet caress of words singing,

"hey, can you hear me?

i just wanted to say:

i love you. i love you, i love you,

i love you and my dear,

you make loving so painless."

i write about love time and time again, i write about you, i write about us. huh. maybe in a way, i do write about death. with us, love lives and laughs and when we're apart, dies, only to rise up from the ashes brighter than the goddamn sun when you see me the next day and we both grin.

i write and it says, "hey, can you hear me?"

and you do, every time.

and you say, "i love you."

I want to yell at the top of my lungs, "i love you i love you i love you so fuckin much i adore you"

but instead, i smile and hold you close. Instead, i write my silly little letters and hope they ring a million times louder than my voice ever could.

“all i want you to be is better than me”

my father went to Germany once. 

His tongue slithered and hissed at the food of the land the whole time he was there, for it had learnt to always fear new things. He ate boiled eggs and french fries and ice cream the entire time he was there.

I will never know how it would feel to be a foreigner so far from home, but this is how I see it: my father, clumsy german and english tinted so heavily with the words his mother first spoke to him, standing in a jewelry store aisle. I will never know, but his image haunts me all the same: my father, browsing through everything gold and glittering. His eyes scintillate brighter than any stone displayed. I would never understand it, but this is what he does: he looks at a ring of jade and thinks- mother would love this. He looks at the store clerk packing it up and thinks- mother would be proud of me.

(When he returns, his mother throws the ring back at his face. It seems to win her love, he needed 24 karats and he was lacking 6, the name of his elder brother and a degree from IIT.)

2. my father lost his job when he was 35

The man who read Mahabharata to me when I was in the womb now looks at amma with empty eyes when she says she can feel the baby kicking. The man who cradled my mother in the palm of his callused hands (carefully, carefully. For her, he was willing to learn not to break all that he loved) now misses all her appointments to the gynaecologist, sleeping in some random park bench with his resume tucked under his head.

My father is 35 and he wants to surrender himself to the sea but knows that just like all the others, it will chew and spit him out of its cruel jaws. My father is 35 and my sister is born. He holds her, but not for too long. When he turns to me, he tells me he’ll buy me all the biryani I want. He clutches my hand tightly as we walk out. 

He tells me he’ll stay.

3. i was 13 when I first remember hugging my father.

I am 13 and all baby fat is melting away with the unwanted emotions as I walk up to him one day and put my arms around him randomly. 

Broken shards and bandages, a heart that thinks and a brain that sings. I held him for the first time that day and discovered all over again: he has always been warm, my father. My hearth, my sun, my appa. And when he strokes my hair, my head almost fits the palm of his hand. The pressure is grounding and there is a father and a child, a boy and his mirror, a lonely god and his creation, in each other’s arms. Broken shards and bandages, a heart that thinks and a brain that sings.

I learn love from him all over again.

4. my father, he has always been hungry.

Hungry for the sweetest delicacies and the most scrumptious of meals (“More, more, more,” he asks. He is eight, twelve, forty-nine. father mine, I weep, do you think your plate can ever remain full?). Hungry for achievements and praises and glory (“I’m proud of you,” I tell him as he wakes up another day with me, “What for?” “I just am”). Hungry for love and money and the world (this globe has always been too small for his hands and yet, and yet, he can’t bear to hold it for even a second. It’s too heavy, he says, it has always been heavy.) Hungry for fulfilment, for peace and rest (more, more, more).

My father, he has never known what it means not to starve and so he says, ”all i want you to be is better than me.” He has never known to be enough, so he says, ”all i want you to be is better than me.”

But father, don’t you see? I am your daughter, your son, your child, and and and- see? I can’t even say who I am because I don’t know. I’ve never belonged and all boxes tear at the edges when they try to contain me. I’ve never known to smile without lying and to let my wounds heal without picking on them over and over again till they’re bloody. I hold my head high and wear the stilettos you gifted me even though my heels are cracked and my gait is faltering. My mouth always tastes like anger and it’s so tiring to hold all this bitterness in me.

Everything I do, it screams your name. Every poem I write, every tear I shed,screams and cries appa, appa look, are you proud of me?

Father, I’ve learnt to claw through scrapes to fill my belly and even though you’re giving and giving and giving me everything I yearn for my stomach still rumbles (more, more, more) and my claws are still unsheathed. Maybe some of us will never be sated, will never know peace. 

But I look at you, and I think: that’s okay. Father, you’ve taught me love and held me through my sleepless nights and brushed away all my tears. I am always filled to the brim with love, I think. Everything I create always comes down to those three words: I love you. Every word I utter sounds like I’ll stay, I promise I’ll stay.

“All I want you to be is better than me.”

But father, don’t you see? I am you. 

Louise Glück, from “Stars”, Poems: 1962–2020

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous