ESTHER LIN

ESTHER LIN THE MIND

So badly you want life to be of the mind. The body is dull. It talks only of itself.

It is hungry. It is tired. It has been humiliated. Every day a new humiliation.

You care for your father’s body. He hates himself for this. He hates you, as well.

You spend the summer reading Dante. Not the traveler but the youth in bloom.

You imagine a wall, a fountain, nightfall. And so on. But you are still young.

When your father begins to die you can no longer read. You began to lose him

the moment you opened your eyes. It was already over. Why should anyone grieve.

BEING WITH, BEING LIKE

In the last days I wheeled him to the courtyard for the fountain and the bench, where he told me stories of my birth and of my childhood and I told him stories of his birth, his childhood. Because I had heard them I was now their teller. And he held my hand.