Crossing Over

By Anne Rhee

This poem explores the generational gap that is felt by first-generation Asian immigrant parents and their children. While communication may seem difficult at first, it is still possible to find hope and reconciliation.

heavy, brittle, disembodied, 
he struggles to form the breaks and snaps in this new language, 
 longing, 
for the comfort of the waterfall of his Korean, 


but his daughter insists, 
eyes sparkling of western conceptions and modernization, 
her voice automated, 
    metallicized, 
 
    a silver cacophony of noise that never seems to fade, 

the air lingering with its brilliance. 


He stares at his daughter through a glass wall, 
expanding in thickness and size, 
his words are the barrier, 
 his mouth, 
 the barrier.


sometimes he is so frustrated, 
that he wishes he could tear his mouth, 
tear this imaginary border  that has 
dislocated him into 
 isolation. 
but 



he cannot do it. 


his words, alive, 
     but dying. 



    strangled 


in the thick 
          abyss of his throat, buried in their graves
          before they are borne into the world. 



he knows that once 
he releases his first word of English
 he will be confined to a prison 
 of a language, 
 caged, limited. 


no, 
he will clutch his roots and his homeland, 
no, 
he refuses to be jailed. 


but his heart bleeds raw 
with the prospect of knowing 
that the price for not entering 
is the wall. 


he sees the secret embarrassment in her eyes 
when he speaks in Korean. 
for her father to be so foreign, 
so Old World
she is confused. 


she doesn’t know how to live
between these two worlds, 
fluttering from English to Korean, 
wanting to not have to choose one 
over the other. 


she becomes angry, 
 small liquid bursts, 
 small petty arguments. 


until one day, it becomes a flood of anger, 
 warm and alive with years of choked resentment, 

until she snaps back to reality, 
snaps back to  loving her father. 


she has become a demon, 
feeding off a thirst of revenge
for what immigrating has done to her image 
of her father. 


another flood, 
 a flood of tears, 
salty and preserved
 its too strong for her, 
 too strong for her to stop and control, 
 too incoherent
to bring back coherence. 


she doesn’t care anymore, doesn’t 
care about fitting in, 


and her tears break down the wall, 
break it until only fragments remain. 

 too small to separate them now. 


they stand there. 
two souls. 


one offers the other a hand. 


the other takes it.