DEAR CHA
by Yi Wei 

They have not questioned. It is all the same to
them. It follows directions. Not yet. They have not
learned the route of instruction. To surpass overtake
the hidden even beyond destination. Destination.

DEAR CHA

Every sentence a tomb where I in ter the body.

What came first: the grief or its death.

Brandon says to capture the shape of the absence.

The sound of the absence is sound still.

It follows our patterns. Learning

the route of our pleasures. I hide my hands

in the bathroom. In McLaughlin’s Dirt,

he says the bathroom is a ritual. I hide everybody’s bodies

in the bathroom. To pass the overpass, we keep

driving to my uncle a hundred miles away. Until

he moves closer and I move farther away.

The pain is not extraordinary, I tell Brandon. It

follows directions. I am present

at every one of its births. I visit them

like new death. It is all the same
​
to them.

---

Yi Wei is a writer unconditionally supportive of Palestinian resistance and liberation. Her work has been awarded or placed for the Frontier OPEN, the Lois Morrell Poetry Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, the Sappho Prize for Women Poets, Best of the Net, and the Lorraine Williams Poetry Prize. She is currently editing at AAWW and writing at NYU as a Writer In the Public Schools fellow.