After Virginia Tech

My father calls to make sure I’m ok, his voice an awkward star in the constellation of dark miles between us. In our patchwork family, he is the one kneeling in the corner, examining these strips which used to hold together, as if tight knots would never come undone. He an observer while my mother opened herself for the feeding. My father the immigrant wants me to take caution in a country where he has learned how to be lonely. Out of his mouth swims a name from the Asian American textbook of my past – Vincent Chin. Do you know the man mistaken, beaten to death? Yes, I say. But these are stark lessons he has never taught me – his own jobs not won, which dreams he has left. We never speak of these things. Tonight, he is singing a lament for those families without second chances, for men who sit in the darkness with no one living in their hearts, for a country he once believed could be his own, before all this.

By: Ching-In Chen -submitted on 09/16/2007 ©. Ching-In Chen