Suji Kwock-Kim: “Not much lives on, from one
generation / to the next. Not much, but not / nothing.”

I cannot speak without the flowers. My mother perfumed the house by cutting 玉蘭花 right as they were blooming, then placing them in saucers of water to disperse their scent. Spectral. Narcotic. From another place, another time. My grandmother kept a rose garden where I invented a private pricking game as a child. Hovering a finger over a thorn, I slowly pressed myself into it, until I could no longer take the pain. When I was finally caught, I feigned clumsiness for no reason. Already, I've spent too much time in memory—sweet ache surfacing unbidden. When I have a daughter, I will also teach her about life like this. And, one day, when she cannot understand herself, she, too, will run away from me into the past.

My mother did not like art in the house, save for a print of van Gogh's Irises. And even then, it was never hung properly, permanently leaned against the living room wall long-side up. I had to turn my own head, as if reading a spine of the book, to fix gravity, perspective. But is there really a correct way of looking? I liked that world, where the earth stretched infinitely into the sky, flowers bursting left out of a dirt wall. It wasn’t until later that I realized the colors were all wrong too. Van Gogh preferred a red that was highly susceptible to light. A fugitive pigment. So, the thick daubs of blue were originally violet, and the single white iris at the left (the bottom?) was truly pink. I did not like this. Pink could not be the color of loneliness.