Mother, I want to write
to you. I want to write
about you. Because I cannot
write for you.
You named me 萃 | 言
because you wanted a daughter
who could wield words that serpentine
and cut.
Because my tongue
would only grow with a pious devotion,
you made the library your church.
The fifteen unyielding
books each week jabbed at your thighs with hard sharp
corners, lacerating your shoulders.
The marks on your skin
were an offering.
Mother, did you know
the 萃 in 拔萃 means
an exuberant riotous
thicket of weed?
To find and grow
something exceptional,
you must first
remove the weed.
Mother, is that why
you have tried so hard
to weed my tongue?
But all the binding and burning
cannot extinguish
the wild tongue that wants
to grow like chives.
Mother, when you see my name now
do you see a wretched wilderness
that stuns you with its thorns
or do you see
a sea of bindweed
blooming white and pink?
Shui-yin Sharon Yam is a diasporic Hongkonger living in Lexington, Kentucky, where she works as a rhetoric professor. She is the author of two books—most recently, Doing Gender Justice: Queering Reproduction, Kin, and Care (co-authored with Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz).