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How to Curse in Mandarin
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.
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