Hôm qua bước vào chợ đắp vào mặt ngay hàng trăm lon bắp chồng chất lên nhau, con nhớ ngay đến mẹ. Cũng vào những tháng ngày vào đông lạnh lẽo, mẹ luộc lon bắp rồi trộn với bơ cho con ăn sáng trước khi cắp sách đến trường. Bắp nóng, ngọt cùng với vị béo, mặn của bơ. Những ký ức lại ùa về.

Sáng nay con tự luộc cho mình một lon và cũng trộn bơ nhưng bắp không được ngọt và bơ cũng không được mặn mà như lúc ấu thơ mẹ nấu cho con. Đưa từng muỗng bắp vào miệng xuýt xoa nhớ đến mẹ vô cùng. Mới đó mà đã gần hai năm trời xa mẹ. Con vẫn không thể nào xoa dịu được nỗi đau chứng kiến những giây phút cuối đời của mẹ. Phải chi con ngăn chặn trước khi con covid gây hại đến mẹ thì giờ này mẹ vẫn ở bên con.

Giờ đây tự trách móc cũng quá muộn rồi. Cuộc đời này có đến rồi cũng sẽ đi. Sớm muộn gì cũng phải biệt ly. Con hiểu và chấp nhận nhưng phải chi mẹ ra đi nhẹ nhàng hơn.

Every U.S. household is eligible to order 4 free at-home COVID-⁠19 tests. I ordered mine. Get yours.

I was about to purchase an LV snowboard for $7,450, but I couldn’t find a pair of LV boots and bindings to complete the package. I had to cancel my order. Darn!

Preparations begin now, in the middle of my life—
death was born with me, didn’t expect to change languages,
might not know when it is called. Sometimes English sits on the surface of the skin.

We are water, we are rivers of descent;
gravity is inevitable yet grievable.
Mourn as you like, death is another migration.

Bring the body home and gently lay it down on its back,
bind tightly the hands and feet of the corpse,
do this to keep it from running away like a lonely child-

carry the coat it wore (when it was a person) to the roof-
a flag of surrender, a signal flag to the spirit world, new arrival;
call out the name of the dead three times.

Perfume the bath water-the death of a thousand flowers-
comb the hair and catch what falls,
what was grown from the body must accompany the body.

Manicure the fingernails and toenails,
carefully reserve the nail trimmings,
the hair and nails are to be collected into five pouches for the coffin.

Obtain a spoon made from a willow tree, it is a lightweight hardwood,
not heavy in the mouth-
feed the corpse three spoonfuls of uncooked rice: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand bushels.

Slide metal coins into the mouth-the spirit journey can be costly, the way long-
cloak the body in the death dress of hemp or silk,

envelop the body with a quilted cloth, and bind the body with ropes seven times.

Transport the body on a decorated bier out of the house-for this you need the living-

observe it float heavily toward the gate. Not unlike a boat
the bier is decorated with fierce dragons and phoenixes; colorful dolls guard the dead.

On the way out of the household premises, lower the bier three times-
the dead’s final departure from home is marked with this ritual bowing.

At the grave, the shaman will exorcise evil spirits from the site. Pay the shaman.

Submerge the coffin in the open ground, it has already been emptied, given its duty,
yes, like another mouth, or a box for a smaller box-one by one,
the ground is a wound that heals, that embraces its lost materials.

Sun Yung Shin

Otsuka’s opening paragraph is so damn good, I have to quote in full. She writes about “The Underground Pool”:

The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of our town. Some of us come here because we are injured, and need to heal. We suffer from bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melancholia, anhedonia, the usual above-ground afflictions. Others of us are employed at the college nearby and prefer to take our lunch breaks down below, in the waters, far away from the harsh glares of our colleagues and screens. Some of us come here to escape, if only for an hour, our disappointing marriages on land. Many of us live in the neighborhood and simply love to swim. One of us—Alice, a retired lab technician now in the early stages of dementia—comes here because she always has. And even though she may not remember the combination to her locker or where she put her towel, the moment she slips into the water she knows what to do. Her stroke is long and fluid, her kick is strong, her mind clear. “Up there,” she says, “I’m just another little old lady. But down here, at the pool, I’m myself.”

After the pool shuts down, Otsuka shifts her focus on Alice who suffers from her deteriorating dementia. Even though the change is quite disrupting, the stories comes out poignant and heartbreaking. Otsuka’s writing is just masterful—as you can already tell from her opening paragraph. It’s a slim, sensational read.

Just so you remember who you dealin’ with
The purest snow, we sellin’ white privilege
Designer drugs will turn niggas limitless
Designer clothes, these hoes losing innocence
The book of blow, just know I’m the Genesis.

Open the box, it’s like ten Christmases
My folks in the box is serving life sentences
I live in a world that never leaves witnesses
Just so you remember who you dealin’ with.

Pusha T (excerpts from “Just So You Remember”)

After taking my oldest son to school yesterday, I headed straight to Bryce Resort. I was the first person there and only a few more showed up afterward. I strapped on my snowboard and hit the absolute beginner magic carpet. I kept falling off at the end of the bell. I switched to my goofy stance and it seemed to be better. I learned to skate with one foot first.

My lesson plan was to learn the heel and toe brakes, but it didn’t turn out that way. The board didn’t go straight down for me to learn to brake. So I had to go wherever the board took me. I fell quite a bit the first two hours. I switched to skiing. I had new skis and boots. The boots killed my feet. I need to get them molded.

I went back to snowboarding in the afternoon. I started to get the link turns using Malcom Moore’s lever techniques. I left the resort around 2:30 pm because I was completely beat. Even though I fell on my butt a lot, my butt was not in pain thanks to Bodyprox protective padded shorts. The shoulders and my knees were so painful afterward. I couldn’t do much else for the rest of the night.

O Love this happened or it did not.
In a room with green walls

my son was born. The cord was torn
too soon, so they cut off

his head to save his heart. He lived
for a long time.

For a long time there was no breath or cry.
When finally he spoke,

he spoke the wide, whorled leaves of corn.
He spoke the crickets

in clusters beneath the sheaves, he sang
the soil in. He sang the wind

in the dune and hush of ebb tide. Some say
he died. Some say he died.

Rebecca Foust

I could hear something from the kitchen
where I stood paring apples for the pie
planned to mark the moment
of my 10-year-old’s playdate, his first
since the move and our first time
with a troop of boys over to trample
the flowerbeds, tear down the old treehouse
and, whooping and laughing,
strip the citrus trees bare. Boys will be boys,
I thought, so so so seduced by the plural-
my son for this day not alone,
but this sound was different.
Not the glorious cacophony
of boys-being-boys, but just one boy-my boy-
lying face down in the dirt
while a hail of green oranges rained down.

I helped him up, wiped his face,
and broke up the circle of boys,
boys with eyes cast down and sometimes
sickled sideways to wink or grin in a way
they thought I couldn’t see. I had a choice
then: make a scene and send them home?
Or, somehow allow them to stay?

There was the pie, and the desolate day ahead,
the desolate tomorrow, and the chain
of desolate yesterdays slung slack behind.

There was my son for whom,
it being his first playdate since the move,
this was a normal playdate, and who,
when I asked, said, You can’t
send them home-they’re my friends!
There was the ER Doc who’d told me
to go home where no one would have to try
to save him, and his nurse, whose glass voice
asked me twice, have you ever prayed?
I needed them on board, and later, the teachers
who wanted to transfer or expel him.
His Sunday-night stomachaches, and the time
I saw him at recess in the bushes, hiding
his eyes so he would not be seen.

So there was all that, and the here-and-now
of a child unable to fathom malice or guile
and able to forgive anyone of anything.
There was also the pie. And, God forgive me,
I let those boys stay.
I practically begged them to stay.

Rebecca Foust

I made soup tonight, with cabbage, chard
and thyme picked outside our back door.
For this moment the room is warm and light,
and I can presume you safe somewhere.
I know the night lives inside you. I know
we made mistakes, dividing you, and hiding
you from inside. I know a trans girl
was knifed last week, another set aflame,
and that these things happen all the time.
I know I lack the words, or all the words
I say are wrong. I know I’ll call, and you
won’t answer, and still I’ll call. I want to tell you
you are loved with all I have, recklessly,
and with abandon, loved the way the cabbage
in my garden near-inverts itself, splayed
to catch each last ray of sun. And how
the feeling furling-in only makes the heart
more dense and green. Tonight it seems like
something one could bear.

Guess what, Dad and I finally figured out Pandora,
and after all those years of silence, our old music
fills the air. It fills the air, and somehow, here,
at this instant and for this instant only
—perhaps three bars—what I recall equals all I feel,
and I remember all the words.

Rebecca Foust