By Cathy Sheng

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This was written in a bout of nostalgia. Looking at old family albums, and how my relatives were a sea away, but it felt much further and I wondered what time will do to us.

Sets of qipao
Twin pigtails
Whispered nighttalks
Devilish schemes
Childish pleasures
We were closer than friends
             Stronger 
We were soulmate sisters
            Cousins
            Closer than blood
She was a chen, who’s nana sold noodle
I was a sheng, who’s nana sold clothes
             But then there was also the pings, with their bags of herbs
             The yans, with their quick wit and wise adages
 But we were all family
             We are a household of bifurcating trees
But we were bonded closer
            Our fathers grew up together
            Our mothers had us together
            Our nanas and yeyes built the very house
Our grandnanas and grand yeyes
            Were once upon a time siblings
Whose love for each other was so great
Their children grew up like blood siblings
            Closer than two twining vines
Then their descendants remained in touch
Our love compounding, not diluting
Imagine a bond that strong
           A bond through blood that withstood through generations 
A tree whose roots so deep
           It weathers the winds of time
           Bearing fruits for eras to come
I wonder a world where i didn’t know
My loving, eccentric cousins and family
Where my extended cousins and 2nd removed cousins
My jabbering uncles and nosy second aunties
	Whose home-stitched scarfs i’ll miss and bear hugs i’ll never have
	Whose salty pork dumplings and folklore i’ll miss
	Whose warm embrace will never offer me strength 
	Whose trees carried them far away, too far away
Whose fond voices and faces
        Were as distant and cold as the whistling tunes of the night
        Where our love as a family dilutes through passage of time
Looking at my siblings
Whose eyes crinkle the way i do when smiling
Whose secrets I’ve held and jokes i’ve spilled
Whose hand i’ve hold on dark nights
Whose tiny infant fingers i’ve curled around mine
Whose gestures and little habits i know by memory
I can’t imagine a world where they grow foreign
        Where one day we will pass by the subway
        Our descendants oblivious to one another
Cold and alien, strangers to the history that bonded us
        To the memories and love that created us
        To the mother tree that connected us
I imagine bifurcating trees
Whose trees grow windy and gnarled
Whose branches diverge into whispery points
Whose seeds are carried by wind far away, 
	To start anew in different places
One by one 
        Second auntie
        Big auntie
        Big uncle
        Second uncle
        Little cousin
        Little sister
All fading away like dying stars
	Our connections frayed apart and severed
	The universe carrying us to separate ends
	The seams holding us fraying one by one
Our family once whole
	Scattered 
Growing out and away,
	Away from each other 
But perhaps some day on the same tree
Whose great trunks carried generations
There will be two girls swinging 
        from its curled, long branches
With their pigtails curled just that way
Lollipops in hand, inseparable
Perhaps then they’ll lock their pinkies together
	A whispered promise to never let go
Perhaps they’ll call themselves 
         soulmate sisters
On these 
               bifurcating 
                    T
                                R
                                            E
                                                       E
                                                                  S 

Process

It was written all in one-go, I was feeling a lot of emotions and it translated into this poem. I haven’t been able to see my grandparents and cousins in years, and even then visits were short and in intervals of years. Hearing my parents talk on the phone, reminiscing about their childhood memories and the close-knit bond, made me see how generation by generation those bonds are fraying through time and fate, and I wonder when this thinning strand of tenuous line will snap, forever severing us, and the sadness of losing that connection.