4.4. Yunze's Reflection
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Translator's Note 1.
This was a poem I wrote in 2016, when I was a freshman in high school. My mother had just flew back to China to be with my grandfather, but I had to stay behind for school. I wrote this poem for my English class's poetry unit, and it was performed as slam poetry instead of read as a written work. When my mom caught wind of it, she shared it with pretty much everyone she knew, and it has now made its way into this memoir. My grandfather (the author of this memoir) even translated it into Chinese. It's somewhat embarrassing now that I've reread it, but it wouldn't be right to omit it either.
Dear Grandpa,
I used to hate coming to visit you when I was young.
I couldn’t bring all of my books,
I had no friends with me,
just you, me, grandma, and the TV.
I was a locked safe to you.
You gently tried every lock combination you could,
but you had not the wrong code,
you had a broken safe.
Even so,
you kept turning the knob
to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left.
Even when your hands had become frail and tired,
even when you didn’t even have the energy to stand up and walk,
you kept turning the knob
to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left.
And now, you’ve been hospitalised.
A disease unknown to me like the nighttime darkness to a young childd,
it took you away and locked you behind bars of iron
where you were held as a prisoner of war.
Turtured. Agonised. Depserate.
You were a drowning man gulping for air,
always struggling,
always reaching for the comfort of fresh air.
And yet…and yet…
The only thing you reached for was my knob with your clammy hands.
And I didn’t tell you to take a nap or get some rest,
I let you keep turning the knob
to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left.
And as those bars you sit behind thicken and strengthen,
as people come between us and keep us separate,
I realised that maybe I don’t need friends or books or games
as much as I need you to turn my knob
to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left.
I’m so sorry that I couldn’t take to you like a bee could sit on an orchid.
I’m so sorry that I just left you behind in a snowstorm without a jacket.
And now that you’re not sitting next to me anymore,
that it’s just grandma and the TV,
how am I supposed to return the time you wasted talking to me instead of getting some rest?
How am I supposed to repay the energy I spent playing games instead of listening to you?
I right this letter because you left me a gift,
something priceless that I took for granted and never used.
I’ve opened the door to my safe and
filled it with the kind words you’ve left me with
so I’ll never feel abandoned
like how I left you.