ESTHER SUN

Poetry | Los Gatos High School, Los Gatos, CA

My grandfather dies on my last night in Iowa

and though I spent the summer learning to write poems

so I can write that these hours feel like a pot of tea burning

too long on the stove — it still doesn’t feel

like mercy. On the plane I dream we all go out to dinner

one last time. Noodles and red bean soup for dessert. My uncles

talking about job markets, my brother with earbuds in,

my grandfather listening quietly. When we return to his house

the new wife steps inside but my grandfather stands

in the dark on the sidewalk, July lying in petals at his feet,

watching our car pull away and sink into the road’s quiet

current. Each time we left I wondered if it would be the last

time I saw him. Each time I burned the sight of him

into memory: one arm behind his back, the other raised

in a wave — memory not as in remember, but memorize.

As it turns out, I can’t remember which dinner was the last

or if it was dinner at all — I can only see his silhouette, dim

windows at his back, the minutes stepping over themselves

like piano notes, the night rippling around him.

Elegy in which each line ends with ye

My dreams won’t let go of my grandfather 爷

teaching me card games in First Aunt’s night- 夜

washed living room while family fills the wild 野

kitchen. He watches me glow. Eight years old, I also 也

peer at him over the unmagnificent 烨

queen of spades, her tired eyes like leaves. 叶

My dreams blur my uncles and aunts into the night 夜

as we approach the family minivan. My grandfather 爷

hands me the ace of diamonds, tells me to keep its wild 野

close. The card kisses my fingertips. Quiet leaf. 叶

In my dreams, we drive away from my grandfather too, 也

gravitate toward the evening’s splendor. 烨

I am never there to watch him dissolve like leaves into the wild night.